nd, and bending
over it, to touch it with his lips.

Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike his fair face with
it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes, and
the dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her own room,
she struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was
bruised, and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if
she could have thrust it in and burned it.'

Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark and
threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as
if her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapes
of outrage and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that might
happen, flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resented
figure marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.

CHAPTER 43. The Watches of the Night

Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more and
more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every day.
Each day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love and hope,
roused up the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and made
it even heavier to bear than it had been before.

It had been hard--how hard may none but Florence ever know!--to have
the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony; and
slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest protection and
the dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what she
had felt, and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But it
was much more hard to be compelled to doubt either her father or Edith,
so affectionate and dear to her, and to think of her love for each of
them, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder.

Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed
upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly
from. She saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard,
inflexible, unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with starting
tears, that her own dear mother had been made unhappy by such treatment,
and had pined away and died? Then she would think how proud and stately
Edith was to everyone but her, with what disdain she treated him, how
distantly she kept apart from him, and what she had said on the night
when they came home; and qui