wishing all the time with all her heart and soul that it need not be.
Just to think, in a little while Lester would not come any more of an
evening! She would not need to get up first of a morning and see that
coffee was made for her lord, that the table in the dining-room looked
just so. It had been a habit of hers to arrange a bouquet for the
table out of the richest blooming flowers of the conservatory, and she
had always felt in doing it that it was particularly for him. Now it
would not be necessary any more--not for him. When one is
accustomed to wait for the sound of a certain carriage-wheel of an
evening grating upon your carriage drive, when one is used to listen
at eleven, twelve, and one, waking naturally and joyfully to the echo
of a certain step on the stair, the separation, the ending of these
things, is keen with pain. These were the thoughts that were running
through Jennie's brain hour after hour and day after day.

Lester on his part was suffering in another fashion. His was not
the sorrow of lacerated affection, of discarded and despised love, but
of that painful sense of unfairness which comes to one who knows that
he is making a sacrifice of the virtues--kindness, loyalty,
affection--to policy. Policy was dictating a very splendid course
of action from one point of view. Free of Jennie, providing for her
admirably, he was free to go his way, taking to himself the mass of
affairs which come naturally with great wealth. He could not help
thinking of the thousand and one little things which Jennie had been
accustomed to do for him, the hundred and one comfortable and pleasant
and delightful things she meant to him. The virtues which she
possessed were quite dear to his mind. He had gone over them time and
again. Now he was compelled to go over them finally, to see that she
was suffering without making a sign. Her manner and attitude toward
him in these last days were quite the same as they had always
been--no more, no less. She was not indulging in private
hysterics, as another woman might have done; she was not pretending a
fortitude in suffering she did not feel, showing him one face while
wishing him to see another behind it. She was calm, gentle,
considerate--thoughtful of him--where he would go and what
he would do, without irritating him by her inquiries. He was struck
quite favorably by her ability to take a large situation largely, and
he admired her. There was something to this woman, let the