sted for an immediate
reduction in their household expenditures, he did not get up until
nearly ten o'clock. For at least an hour before rising, he was awake,
suffering in both body and mind; for the night's debauch had left him,
as was usually the case, with a most violent headache. During all the
time he heard, at intervals, the voice of Cara in the adjoining,
talking to or scolding at the children; but not once during the time
did she come into the chamber where he lay. He felt it as a total want
of interest or affection on her part. He had done wrong; he felt that;
yet, at the same time, he also felt that Cara had her share of the
blame to bear. If she had only manifested some feeling for him, some
interest in him, he would have been softened; but, as she did not, by
keeping entirely away, show that she thought or cared for him, the pure
waters of right feeling, that were gushing up in his mind, were touched
with the gall of bitterness.

Rising at length, Ellis began dressing himself, purposely making
sufficient noise to reach the ears of his wife. But she did not make
her appearance.

Two doors led from the chamber in which he was. One communicated with
the adjoining room, used as a nursery, and the other with the passage.
After Ellis had dressed and shaved himself, he was, for a short time,
undecided whether to enter the nursery, in which were his wife and
children, or to pass through the other door, and leave the house
without seeing them.

"I shall only get my feelings hurt," said he, as he stood debating the
point. "It's a poor compensation for trouble and the lack of domestic
harmony, to get drunk, I know; and I ought to be, and am, ashamed of my
own folly. Oh dear! what is to become of me? Why will not Cara see the
evil consequences of the way she acts upon her husband? If I go to
destruction, and the chances are against me, the sin will mainly rest
upon her. Yet why should I say this? Am I not man enough to keep sober?
Yes"--thus he went on talking to himself--"but if she will not act in
some sort of unity with me, I shall be ruined in my business. It will
never do to maintain our present expensive mode of living; and she will
never hear to a change."

Just at this moment an angry exclamation from the lips of Mrs. Ellis
came sharply on the ears of her husband, followed by the whipping and
crying of one of the children, who had, as far as Ellis could gather,
from what was said, overset his mother's work-