t in me to humour any one. And for a man
to want to be humoured! Oh, dear! oh, dear! this is a wretched way to
live; it will kill me in the end. These men expect their own way in
every thing, and if they don't get it, then there is trouble. I'm not
fit to be Henry's wife. He ought to have married a woman with less
independence of spirit; one who would have been the mere creature of
his whims and fancies."

Mrs. Ellis, with a troubled heart, went up to the room where so many of
her lonely evening hours were spent. Taking her work-basket, she tried
to sew; but her thoughts troubled her so, that she finally sought
refuge therefrom in the pages of an exciting romance.

The realizing power of imagination in Ellis was very strong. While he
paced the floor after his wife and children had left the room, there
came to him such a vivid picture of the coldness and reserve that must
mark the hours of that evening, if they were passed with Cara, that he
turned from it with a sickening sense of pain. Under the impulse of
that feeling he left the house, but with no purpose as to where he was
going.

For as long, perhaps, as half an hour, Ellis walked the street, his
mind, during most of the time, pondering the events of the day. His
absence from business was so much lost, and would throw double burdens
on the morrow, for, besides the sum of two hundred dollars to be
returned to Wilkinson, he had a hundred to make up for another friend
who had accommodated him. But where was the money to come from? In the
matter of borrowing, Ellis had never done much, and his resources in
that line were small. His losses at the gaming-table added so much to
the weight of discouragement under which he suffered!

"You play well." Frequently had the artful tempter, Carlton, lured his
victim on by this and other similar expressions, during the time he had
him in his power; and thus flattered, Ellis continued at cards until
repeated losses had so far sobered him as to give sufficient mental
resolution to enable him to stop.

Now, these expressions returned to his mind, and their effect upon him
was manifested in the thought,--

"If I hadn't been drinking, he would have found in me a different
antagonist altogether."

It was an easy transition from this state of mind to another. It was
almost natural for the wish to try his luck again at cards to be
formed; particularly as he was in great need of money, and saw no
legitimate means of getting the ne