rry returned home, he found his wife seated at the window,
awaiting his approach. Secret grief was gnawing at her heart. Her sad,
pale cheeks and swollen eyes showed too well that agony, far deeper than
her speech portrayed, filled her heart. A dull and death-like silence
prevailed on his entrance. His pale face and brow, dishevelled hair, and
the feeling that he manifested on finding Gertrude still up, told Henry
in plainer words than she could have used that his wife was aware that
her love had never been held sacred by him. The window-blinds were still
unclosed, and the full-orbed moon shed her soft refulgence over the
unrivalled scene, and gave it a silvery lustre which sweetly harmonized
with the silence of the night. The clock's iron tongue, in a neighboring
belfry, proclaimed the hour of twelve, as the truant and unfaithful
husband seated himself by the side of his devoted and loving wife, and
inquired if she was not well.

"I am, dear Henry," replied Gertrude; "but I feat _you_ are not. If well
in body, I fear you are not at peace in mind."

"Why?" inquired he.

"Because," she replied, "you are so pale and have such a wild look in
your eyes."

Again he protested his innocence, and vowed she was the only woman
who had any claim upon his heart. To behold one thus playing upon the
feelings of two lovely women is enough to make us feel that evil must at
last bring its own punishment.

Henry and Gertrude had scarcely risen from the breakfast-table next
morning ere old Mrs. Miller made her appearance. She immediately took
her daughter aside, and informed her of her previous night's experience,
telling her how she had followed Henry to Isabella's cottage, detailing
the interview with the quadroon, and her late return home alone. The old
woman urged her daughter to demand that the quadroon and her child be at
once sold to the negro speculators and taken out of the State, or that
Gertrude herself should separate from Henry.

"Assert your rights, my dear. Let no one share a heart that justly
belongs to you," said Mrs. Miller, with her eyes flashing fire. "Don't
sleep this night, my child, until that wench has been removed from that
cottage; and as for the child, hand that over to me,--I saw at once that
it was Henry's."

During these remarks, the old lady was walking up and down the room
like a caged lioness. She had learned from Isabella that she had been
purchased by Henry, and the innocence of the injured quadr