As Edna hurriedly glanced over the pages, and put them in her pocket, Gertrude said gayly, “Shame on you, Gordon!  Do you mean to say, or, rather to insinuate, that all who read Edna’s book are victimized?”

He looked at her from under thickening eyebrows, and replied with undisguised impatience: 

“No; your common sense ought to teach you that such was not my meaning or intention.  Edna places no such interpretation on my words.”

“Common sense!  Oh, Gordon, dearie! how unreasonable you are!  Why, you have told me a thousand times that I had not a particle of common sense, except on the subject of juleps; and how, then, in the name of wonder, can you expect me to show any?  I never pretended to be a great shining genius like Edna, whose writings all the world is talking about.  I only want to be wise enough to understand you, dearie, and make you happy.  Gordon, don’t you feel any better?  What makes your face so red?”

She went back to his chair, and leaned her lovely head close to his, while an anxious expression filled her large blue eyes.

Gordon Leigh realized that his marriage was a terrible mistake, which only death could rectify; but even in his wretchedness he was just, blaming only himself—­exonerating his wife.  Had he not wooed the love of which, already, he was weary?  Having deceived her at the altar, was there justification for his dropping the mask at the hearthstone?  Nay, the skeleton must be no rattling of skull and crossbones to freeze the blood in the sweet laughing face of the trusting bird.

Now her clinging tenderness, her affectionate humility, upbraided him as no harsh words could possibly have done.  With a smothered sigh he passed his arm around her, and drew her closer to his side.

“At least my little wife is wise enough to teach her husband to be ashamed of his petulance.”

“And quite wise enough, dear Gertrude, to make him very proud and happy; for you ought to be able to say with the sweetest singer in all merry England: 

  ’But I look up and he looks down,
    And thus our married eyes can meet;
   Unclouded his, and clear of frown,
    And gravely sweet.’”

As Edna glanced at the young wife and uttered these words, a mist gathered in her own eyes, and collecting her sewing utensils she went to her room to pack her trunk.

During her stay at the parsonage she had not attended service in the church, because Mr. Hammond was lonely, and her Sabbaths were spent in reading to him.  But her old associates in the choir insisted that, before she returned to New York, she should sing with them once more.

Thus far she had declined all invitations; but on the morning of the last day of her visit, the organist called to say that a distinguished divine, from a distant State, would fill Mr. Hammond’s pulpit; and as the best and leading soprano in the choir was disabled by severe cold, and could not be present, he begged that Edna would take her place, and sing a certain solo in the music which he had selected for an opening piece.  Mr. Hammond, who was pardonably proud of his choir, was anxious that the stranger should be greeted and inspired by fine music, and urged Edna’s compliance with the request.