face, and
he went off without taking leave of me, flourishing his stick, and
swearing eternal hatred and vengeance against the entire civilised
society of the world. He was delightfully amusing. Will anybody play
baccarat? I will start a bank."

The majority were for the game, and in a few minutes were seated at a
large green table, drawing cards and betting with a good will, and
interspersing their play with stray remarks on the events of the morning.

CHAPTER XVI.

Corona was fast coming to a state of mind in which a kind of passive
expectation--a sort of blind submission to fate--was the chief feature.
She had shed tears when her husband spoke of his approaching end, because
her gentle heart was grateful to him, and by its own sacrifices had grown
used to his presence, and because she suddenly felt that she had
comprehended the depth of his love for her, as she had never understood
it before. In the five years of married life she had spent with him, she
had not allowed herself to think of his selfishness, of his small daily
egotism; for, though it was at no great expense to himself, he had been
uniformly generous and considerate to her. But she had been conscious
that if she should ever remove from her conscience the pressure of a
self-imposed censorship, so that her judgment might speak boldly, the
verdict of her heart would not have been so indulgent to her husband as
was that formal opinion of him which she forced herself to hold. Now,
however, it seemed as though the best things she had desired to believe
of him were true; and with the conviction that he was not only not
selfish, but absolutely devoted to herself, there had come upon her a
fear of desolation, a dread of being left alone--of finding herself
abandoned by this strange companion, the only person in the world with
whom she had the habit of familiarity and the bond of a common past.
Astrardente had thought, and had told her too, that the knowledge of his
impending death might lighten her burden--might make the days of
self-sacrifice that yet remained seem shorter; he had spoken kindly of
her marrying again when he should be dead, deeming perhaps, in his sudden
burst of generosity that she would be capable of looking beyond the
unhappy present to the possibilities of a more brilliant future, or at
least that the certainty of his consent to such a second union would
momentarily please her. It was hard to say why he had spoken. It had been
an i