flirting so much with him, and leaving him, her husband, to look about for himself.  He had shown, too, that he did not like it to Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus who probably thought him a bear, as perhaps he was.  On the whole, Richard was very uncomfortable in his mind, and Aunt Van Buren’s letter did not tend in the least to improve his temper; so when Ethelyn asked him of what he was thinking, and accompanied her question with a stroke of her hand upon his hair, he answered her, “Nothing much, except that I am tired and sleepy.”

The touch upon his hair he had felt to his finger tips, for Ethelyn seldom caressed him even as much as this; but he was in too moody a frame of mind to respond as he would once have done.  His manner was not very encouraging, but, as if she had nerved herself to some painful duty, Ethelyn persisted, and said to him next:  “You have not seen Aunt Van Buren’s letter.  Shall I read you what she says?”

Every nerve in Richard’s body had been quivering with curiosity to see that letter, but now, when the coveted privilege was within his reach, he refused it; and, little dreaming of all he was throwing aside, answered indifferently:  “No, I don’t know that I care to hear it.  I hardly think it will pay.  Where are they now?”

“At Saratoga,” Ethelyn replied; but her voice was not the same which had addressed Richard first; there was a coldness, a constraint in it now, as if her good resolution had been thrown back upon her and frozen up the impulse prompting her to the right.

Richard had had his chance with Ethelyn and lost it.  But he did not know it, or guess how sorry and disappointed she was when at last she left him and retired to her sleeping-room.  There was a window open in the parlor, and as the wind was rising with a sound of rain, Richard went to close it ere following his wife.  The window was near to the piano and as he shut it something rattled at his feet.  It was the crumpled letter, which Ethelyn had accidentally drawn from her dress pocket with the handkerchief she held in her hand when she sat down by Richard.  He knew it was that letter, and his first thought was to carry it to Ethelyn; then, as he remembered her offer to read it to him, he said, “Surely there can be no harm in reading it for myself.  A man has a right to know what is in a letter to his wife.”

Thus reasoning, he sat down by the side light as far away from the bedroom door as possible and commenced Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s letter.  They were stopping at the United States, and there was nothing particular at first, except her usual remarks of the people and what they wore; but on the third page Richard’s eye caught Frank’s name, and skipping all else, leaped eagerly forward to what the writer was saying of her son.  His conduct evidently did not please his mother; neither did the conduct of Nettie, who was too insipid for anything, the lady wrote, adding that she was not half so bright and pretty as when she was first married, but had the headache and kept her own room most of the time, and was looking so faded and worn that Frank was really ashamed of her.