ry fortunate man to have two
such treasures, and he could not help saying so.

"I love to have the little thing where I can watch her myself; so, when
there is no one in, nurse spares her to me, and we sit here as cosily as
possible. I could watch her for hours. Sometimes she does not move, and
then she will smile so sweetly in her sleep--and only look at those dear
little dimpled hands, Willis!"

And yet Willis took the coat when it came, though with a guilty feeling at
heart. The greater the self-reproach, the more the pride that arose to
combat it; and he drew on his gloves resolutely.

"Don't sit up for me," he said, as he had said a hundred times before; and
in a moment the hall door shut with a clang, as he passed into the street.
Catherine echoed the sound with a half sigh. The morning's conversation
rose to her recollection, and she had hoped, she scarce knew why, that
Willis would remain with her that evening. But she checked the regretful
reverie, and took up the pretty little sock she was knitting for Gertrude,
and soon became engrossed in counting and all the after mysteries of this
truly feminine employment.

Willis was ill at ease. He met young Morgan on the steps, and returned his
bow very coldly. His usual companions were absent, and, after haunting the
saloon restlessly for an hour, he strolled down to his counting-house. He
knew that the foreign correspondence had just arrived, and, as he expected,
his confidential clerk was still at the desk. And here he found, much to
his dismay, that the presence of one of the firm was immediately necessary
in Paris, and that, as the partner who usually attended to this branch of
the business was ill, the journey would devolve on him. He was detained
until a late hour, and as he turned his steps homeward the scene that he
had left there rose vividly to his mind. He hurried up the steps, hoping to
find Catherine still there, but the room was empty, and the fire, glowing
redly through the bars of the grate, was the only thing to welcome him. He
stood a long time, leaning his elbow on the marble of the mantel, and
thought over many things that had happened within the last few years--the
many happy social evenings he had passed at that very hearth; the unvarying
love and constancy of his wife; of his late neglect, for he could call it
by no gentler name; and then came the thought that he must leave all this
domestic peace, which he had valued so little--and who knew w