The signal, after a short respite, devoted to fruits, ices, &C.,

was made for the dancers, and William Edgerton rose. I noted his bow

to my wife, saw that he spoke, and necessarily concluded, that he

again solicited her to dance. Her lips moved--she bowed slightly--and

he again took his seat beside her. I inferred from this that she

declined to dance a second time. She was certainly more prudent

than himself. I assigned to prudence--to policy--on her part, what

might well have been placed to a nobler motive. I went further.

"She will not dance with him," said the busy fiend at my shoulder,

"for the very reason that she prefers a quiet seat beside him. In

the dance they mingle with others; they can not speak with so much

ease and safety. Now she has him all to herself."

I dashed away, forgetful, gloomily, from the knot by which I

had been encompassed. I passed into the adjoining room, which was

connected by folding doors, with that I left. The crowd necessarily

grouped itself around the dancers, and (sic) a window-jamb, I stood

absolutely forgetting where I was alone among the many--with my

eye stretching over the heads of the flying masses, to the remote

spot where my wife still sat with Edgerton. I was aroused from my

hateful dream by a slight touch upon my arm. I started with a painful

sense of my own weakness--with a natural dread that the secret misery

under which I labored was no longer a secret. I writhed under the

conviction that the cold, the sneering, and the worthless, were

making merry with my afflictions. I met the gaze of the bride--the

mistress of ceremonies--my wife's mother Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford.

I shuddered as I beheld her glance. I could not mistake the volume

of meaning in her smile--that wretched smile of her thin, withered

lips, brimful of malignant cunning, which said emphatically as such

smile could say:-"I see you on the rack; I know that you are writhing; and I enjoy

your tortures."

I started, as if to leave her, with a look of fell defiance,

roused, ready to burst forth into utterance, upon my own face. But

she gently detained my arm.

"You are troubled."

"No."

"Ah! but you are. Stop awhile. You will feel better."

"Thank you; but I feel very well."

"No, no, you do not. You can not deceive me. I know where the shoe

pinches; but what did you expect? Were you simple enough to imagine

that a woman would be true to her husband, who was false to her

own mother?"

"Fiend!" I muttered in her ear.

"Ha! ha! ha!" was the unmeasured response of the bel dame, loud

enough for the whole house to hear. I darted from her grasp, which

would have detained me still, made my way--how I know not--out of

the house, and found myself almost gasping for breath, in the open

air of the street.




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