“If the Saviour commended the one who said he wouldn’t and then went and did it, I think there can be no harm in your breaking a wicked vow:  leastways I should do it.”

This was Andy’s advice, and that night, long after the family were in bed, a light was shining in Ethelyn’s chamber, where she sat writing to her husband, and as if Andy’s spirit were pervading hers, she softened, as she wrote and asked forgiveness for all the past which she had made so wretched.  She was going to do better, she said, and when her husband came home she would try to make him happy.

“But, oh, Richard,” she wrote, “please take me away from here to Camden, or Olney, or anywhere—­so I can begin anew to be the wife I ought to be.  I was never worthy of you, Richard.  I deceived you from the first, and if I could summon the courage I would tell you about it.”

This letter which would have done so much good, was never finished, for when the morning came there were troubled faces at the prairie farmhouse—­Mrs. Markham looking very anxious and Eunice very scared, James going for the doctor and Andy for Mrs. Jones, while up in Ethie’s room, where the curtains were drawn so closely before the windows, life and death were struggling for the mastery, and each in a measure coming off triumphant.

CHAPTER XVI

WASHINGTON

Richard had not been very happy in Washington.  He led too quiet and secluded a life, his companions said, advising him to go out more, and jocosely telling him that he was pining for his young wife and growing quite an old man.  When Melinda Jones came, Richard brightened a little, for there was always a sense of comfort and rest in Melinda’s presence, and Richard spent much of his leisure in her society, accompanying her to concerts and occasionally to a levee, and taking pains to show her whatever he thought would interest her.  It was pleasant to have a lady with him sometimes, and he wished so much it had been practicable for Ethelyn to have come.  “Poor Ethie,” he called her to himself, pitying her because, vain man that he was, he thought her so lonely without him.  This was at first, and before he had received in reply to his letter that dreadful blank, which sent such a chill to his heart, making him cold, and faint, and sick, as he began to realize what it was in a woman’s power to do.  He had occasionally thought of Ethelyn’s threat, not to write him a line, and felt very uncomfortable as he recalled the expression of her eyes when she made it.  But he did not believe she was in earnest.  She surely could not hold out against the letter he wrote, telling how he missed her every moment, and how, if it had been at all advisable, he would have taken her with him.  He did not know Ethelyn, and so was not prepared for the bitter disappointment in store for him when the dainty little envelope was put into his hand.  It was her handwriting—­so