“So perish the memory of our acquaintance!”

Almost a dead letter of suffering had been those two years.  There are no events to record, and but little progress to state.  Yes, there had been a dead level of suffering—­a palsied condition of heart and mind; a period of almost sluggish endurance, in which pride and an indomitable will gave strength to bear.

Mr. Delancy and his daughter were sitting, as we have seen, on that sweet June day, in silent abstraction of thought, when the serving-man, who had been to the village, stepped into the portico and handed Irene a letter.  The sight of it caused her heart to leap and the blood to crimson suddenly her face.  It was not an ordinary letter—­one in such a shape had never come to her hand before.

“What is that?” asked her father, coming back as it were to life.

“I don’t know,” she answered, with an effort to appear indifferent.

Mr. Delancy looked at his daughter with a perplexed manner, and then let his eyes fall upon the legal envelope in her hand, on which a large red seal was impressed.

Rising in a quiet way, Irene left the portico with slow steps; but no sooner was she beyond her father’s observation than she moved toward her chamber with winged feet.

“Bless me, Miss Irene!” exclaimed Margaret, who met her on the stairs, “what has happened?”

But Irene swept by her without a response, and, entering her room, shut the door and locked it.  Margaret stood a moment irresolute, and then, going back to her young lady’s chamber, knocked for admission.  There was no answer to her summons, and she knocked again.

“Who is it?”

She hardly knew the voice.

“It is Margaret.  Can’t I come in?”

“Not now,” was answered.

“What’s the matter, Miss Irene?”

“Nothing, Margaret.  I wish to be alone now.”

“Something has happened, though, or you’d never look just like that,” said Margaret to herself, as she went slowly down stairs.  “Oh dear, dear!  Poor child! there’s nothing but trouble for her in this world.”

It was some minutes before Irene found courage to break the imposing seal and look at the communication within.  She guessed at the contents, and was not wrong.  They informed her, in legal phrase, that her husband had filed an application for a divorce on the ground of desertion, and gave notice that any resistance to this application must be on file on or before a certain date.

The only visible sign of feeling that responded to this announcement was a deadly paleness and a slight, nervous crushing of the paper in her hands.  Moveless as a thing inanimate, she sat with fixed, dreamy eyes for a long, long time.

A divorce!  She had looked for this daily for more than a year, and often wondered at her husband’s tardiness.  Had she desired it?  Ah, that is the probing question.  Had she desired an act of law to push them fully asunder—­to make the separation plenary in all respects?  No.  She did not really wish for the irrevocable sundering decree.