lation, the gratified wife left her
husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
peculiar habits.

As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
lights, my lady's picture shining with less and less importunity as the
flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about--and
could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, "Is it never given
to man to forget!" Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
phantasy. _This_ is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.

XII.

MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.

"For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make."

SPE