From that hour Mrs. Lee was a changed woman.  She felt that the star of love, which for so many happy years had thrown its rays into the very midst of their fireside circle, had become hidden amid clouds, from which she looked at every moment for the bursting of a desolating storm.  And her husband was, likewise, a changed man.  His pride and self-love had been wounded, and he could not forgive her who had thus wounded him, even though she were his wife.  Whenever he was under the influence of liquor, he would brood over her words, and indulge in bitter thoughts against her because she had presumed to insinuate that there was danger of his becoming a drunkard.

At last he was brought home in a state of drunken insensibility.  This humbled him for a time, but did not cause him to abandon the use of intoxicating drinks.  And it was not long before he was again in the same condition.

But we cannot linger to trace, step by step, his downward course, nor to describe its effects upon the mind of his wife; but will pass over five years more, and again introduce them to the reader.

How sadly altered is every thing!  The large and comfortable house, in an eligible position, has been changed for a small, close, ill-arranged tenement.  The elegant furniture has disappeared, and in its place are but few articles, and those old and common.  But the saddest change of all is apparent in the face, dress, and air of Mrs. Lee.  Her pale, thin, sorrow-stricken countenance—­her old and faded garments—­her slow, melancholy movements, contrast sadly with what she was a few years before.

A lot of incessant toil is now her portion.  Lee has, in consequence of intemperance, causing neglect of business, failed, and had every thing taken from him to pay his debts.  For a while after this event, he contributed to the support of his wife and child by acting in the capacity of a clerk.  But he soon became so dissipated, that no merchant would employ him, and the entire support of the family fell upon his wife.  That was, in the very nature of things, an exceedingly meagre support.  Mrs. Lee had never looked forward to such a condition in life, and therefore was entirely unprepared for it.  Ordinary sewing was all that she could do, and at this she could make but a small pittance.  The little that her husband earned was all expended in the accursed poison that had already ruined himself and beggared his family.

After having suffered every thing to sink to this condition, Lee found so little attractive in the appearance of a heart-broken wife and beggared child, and so much about them to reprove him, that he left them without a word, and went off to a neighbouring city.