r face from morning until night. And this is what
fools call the honeymoon. Moonshine enough, so far as I can see, but
precious little honey."

Miss Waddle stabbed her pen down in the inkstand, took a deep and
vicious dip, and plunged wildly into literature once more. Mr.
Thorndyke, listlessly, wearily and unutterably bored, joined the idol of
his existence.

In the Chelsea cottage they were known as "Mr. and Mrs. Laurence." For
Norine, she was radiantly happy--no weariness, no boredom for her. The
honey grew sweeter to her taste every day; but then women as a rule have
a depraved taste for unwholesome sweetmeats; the days Mr. Thorndyke
found so long, so vapid, so dreary, were bright, brief dreams of bliss
to her. She had written her short explanatory note home during the first
week, and had given it to Laurence to post. Laurence took it, glad of an
excuse over to Boston, and on the ferry-boat tore it into fifty minute
fragments and cast them to the four winds of Heaven. Norine had written
a second time, and a third. Her piteous little letters met the same
fate. That was one drawback to her perfect Paradise--there was a second,
Laurence's growing weariness of it all.

"If he should become tired of me; if he should repent his hasty
marriage; if he should cease to love me, what would become of me?" she
thought, clasping her hands in an agony. "Oh, mon Dieu! let me die
sooner than that. I know I am far beneath him--such lovely, accomplished
ladies as my darling might have married--but ah, not one of them all
could ever love him better than poor Norine!"

She hid her fears; the tears she shed over their silence and
unforgiveness at home were tears shed in solitude and darkness, where
they might not offend or reproach him. She tried every simple little
art to be beautiful and attractive in his sight. Her smiling face was
the last thing he saw, let him quit her ever so often--her smiling face
looked brightly and sweetly up at him let those absences be ever so
prolonged. And they were growing more frequent and more prolonged every
day. He took her nowhere--his own evenings, without exception now, were
spent in Boston, the smallest of the small hours his universal hours for
coming home. And not always too steady of foot or too fluent of speech
at these comings, for this captivating young man was fonder of the
rattle of the dice-box, the shuffling of the pack, and the "passing of
the rosy" than was at all good for him.

"L