Home, and
consequently England, was closed to him; the grand mansion he had once
believed his had faded from his mind.

Thinking of all these things, Ronald's love for his young wife seemed
changed to dislike. Three days passed before he returned home; then he
was somewhat startled to find her really gone. He had anticipated
sullen temper, renewed quarrels, and then perhaps a separation, but he
was startled to find her actually gone. The servant gave him the cold
farewell letter, written without tears, without sorrow. He tore it
into shreds and flung it from him.

"The last act in the farce," he said, bitterly. "If I had not been mad,
I should have foreseen this."

The silent, deserted rooms did not remind him of the loving young wife
parted from him forever. He was too angry, too annoyed, for any gentle
thoughts to influence him. She had left him--so much the better; there
could never again be peace between them. He thought with regret of the
little ones--they were too young for him to undertake charge of them,
so that they were best left with their mother for a time. He said to
himself that he must make the best use he could of his life; everything
seemed at an end. He felt very lonely and unhappy as he sat in his
solitary home; and the more sorrow present upon him, the more bitter
his thoughts grew, the deeper became his dislike to this unhappy young
wife.

Ronald wrote to his mother, but said no word to her of the cause of
their quarrel.

"Dora and I," he said, "will never live together again--perhaps never
meet. She has gone home to her father; I am going to wander over the
wide earth. Will you induce my father to receive my children at
Earlescourt? And will you see Mr. Burt, and arrange that half of my
small income is settled upon Dora?"

But to all his wife's entreaties Lord Earle turned a deaf ear. He
declared that never during his life time should the children of Dora
Thorne enter Earlescourt. His resolution was fixed and unalterable.
How, he asked, was he to trust the man who had once deceived him? For
aught he knew, the separation between Ronald and his wife might be a
deeply laid scheme, and, the children once with him, there would be a
grand reconciliation between the parents.

"I am not surprised," he said, "that the unhappy boy is weary of his
pretty toy. It could not be otherwise; he must bear the consequences
of his own folly. He had time for thought, he made his own choice--now