“Aunt Sophia!” and Ethie looked very much like her former self, as she started from her pillow and confronted her interlocutor.  “He cannot think so.  I never knew he had been governor until I heard it from Aunt Barbara last night.  I came back for no honors, no object.  My work was taken from me; I had nothing more to do, and I was so tired, and sick, and weary, and longed so much for home.  Don’t begrudge it to me, Aunt Sophia, that I came to see Aunt Barbara once more.  I won’t stay long in anybody’s way; and if—­if he likes, Richard—­can—­get—­that—­divorce—­as soon as he pleases.”

The last came gaspingly, and showed the real state of Ethie’s feelings.  In all the five long years of her absence the possibility that Richard would seek to separate himself from her had never crossed her mind.  She had looked upon his love for her as something too strong to be shaken—­as the great rock in whose shadow she could rest whenever she so desired.  At first, when the tide of angry passion was raging at her heart, she had said she never should desire it, that her strength was sufficient to stand alone against the world; but as the weary weeks and months crept on, and her anger had had time to cool, and she had learned better to know the meaning of “standing alone in the world,” and thoughts of Richard’s many acts of love and kindness kept recurring to her mind, she had come gradually to see that the one object in the future to which she was looking forward was a return to Aunt Barbara and a possible reconciliation with her husband.  The first she had achieved, and the second seemed so close within her grasp, a thing so easy of success, that in her secret heart she had exulted that, after all, she was not to be more sorely punished than she had been—­that she could not have been so very much in fault, or Providence would have placed greater obstacles in the way of restoration to all that now seemed desirable.  But Ethie’s path back to peace and quiet was not to be free from thorns, and for a few minutes she writhed in pain, as she thought how possible, and even probable, it was that Richard should seek to be free from one who had troubled him so much.  Life looked very dreary to Ethelyn that moment—­drearier than it ever had before—­but she was far too proud to betray her real feelings to her aunt, who, touched by the look of anguish on her niece’s face, began to change her tactics, and say how glad she was to have her darling back under any circumstances, and so she presumed Richard would be.  She knew he would, in fact; and if she were Ethie, she should write to him at once, apprising him of her return, but not making too many concessions.—­Men could not bear them, and it was better always to hold a stiff rein, or there was danger of a collision.  She might as well have talked to the winds, for all that Ethie heard or cared.  She was thinking of Richard, and the possibility that she might not be welcome to him now.  If so, nothing could tempt