“You know how he likes brilliant, sparkling girls,” she wrote, “and of course he has no patience with Nettie’s fancied ailments.  I can’t say that I altogether sympathize with her myself; and, dear Ethie, I must acknowledge that it has more than once occurred to me that I did very wrong to meddle with Frank’s first love affair.  He would be far happier now if it had been suffered to go on, for I suspect he has never entirely gotten over it; but it is too late now for regrets.  Nettie is his wife, and he must make the best of it.”

Then followed what seemed the secret of the Van Buren discomfort.  The bank in which most of Nettie’s fortune was deposited had failed, leaving her with only the scanty income of five hundred dollars a year, a sum not sufficient to buy clothes, Mrs. Van Buren said.  But Richard did not notice this—­his mind was only intent upon Frank’s first love affair, which ought to have gone on.  He did not ask himself whether, in case it had gone on, Ethelyn would have been there, so near to him that her soft breathing came distinctly to his ear.  He knew she would not; there had been something between her and Frank Van Buren, he was convinced beyond a doubt, and the fiercest pang he had ever known was that which came to him when he sat with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s letter in his hand, wondering why Ethie had withheld the knowledge of it from him, and if she had outlived the love which her aunt regretted as having come to naught.  Then, as the more generous part of his nature began to seek excuses for her, he asked himself why she offered to read the letter if she had really been concerned in Frank’s first love affair, and hope whispered that possibly she was not the heroine of that romance.  There was comfort in that thought:  and Richard would have been comforted if jealousy had not suggested how easy it was for her to skip the part relating to Nettie and Frank, and thus leave him as much in the dark as ever.  Yes, that was undoubtedly her intention.  While seeming to be so open and honest, she would have deceived him all the more.  This was what Richard decided, and his heart grew very hard against the young wife, who looked so innocent and pretty in her quiet sleep, when at last he sought his pillow and lay down by her side.

He was very moody and silent for days after that, and even his clients detected an irritability in his manner which they had never seen before.  “There was nothing ailed him,” he said to Ethelyn, when she asked what was the matter, and accused him of being positively cross.  She was very gay; Camden society suited her; and as the season advanced, and the festivities grew more and more frequent, she was seldom at home more than one or two evenings in the week, while the day was given either to the arrangement of dress or taking of necessary rest, so that her husband saw comparatively little of her, except for the moment when she always came to him with hood and white cloak in hand to ask him how she looked, before