m in his eyes, she had risen
hastily. "You are talking very strangely."

"Oh, don't be alarmed, madam. I am not drunk!"--he pronounced the word
with a fierce energy. "I had better leave you. Indeed, I think the less
we see of each other the better."

Deeply wounded and astonished at this extraordinary outburst, Sylvia
allowed him to stride away without a word. She saw him pass through the
garden and slam the little gate, but she did not see the agony on his
face, or the passionate gesture with which--when out of eyeshot--he
lamented the voluntary abasement of himself before her. She thought
over his conduct with growing fear. It was not possible that he was
intoxicated--such a vice was the last one of which she could have
believed him guilty. It was more probable that some effects of the
fever, which had recently confined him to his house, yet lingered.
So she thought; and, thinking, was alarmed to realize of how much
importance the well-being of this man was to her.

The next day he met her, and, bowing, passed swiftly. This pained her.
Could she have offended him by some unlucky word? She made Maurice ask
him to dinner, and, to her astonishment, he pleaded illness as an excuse
for not coming. Her pride was hurt, and she sent him back his books and
music. A curiosity that was unworthy of her compelled her to ask the
servant who carried the parcel what the clergyman had said. "He said
nothing--only laughed." Laughed! In scorn of her foolishness! His
conduct was ungentlemanly and intemperate. She would forget, as speedily
as possible, that such a being had ever existed. This resolution taken,
she was unusually patient with her husband.

So a week passed, and Mr. North did not return. Unluckily for the poor
wretch, the very self-sacrifice he had made brought about the precise
condition of things which he was desirous to avoid. It is possible that,
had the acquaintance between them continued on the same staid footing,
it would have followed the lot of most acquaintanceships of the
kind--other circumstances and other scenes might have wiped out the
memory of all but common civilities between them, and Sylvia might never
have discovered that she had for the chaplain any other feeling but
that of esteem. But the very fact of the sudden wrenching away of her
soul-companion, showed her how barren was the solitary life to which
she had been fated. Her husband, she had long ago admitted, with bitter
self-communings, was utter