“I wish you good evening, madam.  And may I see you in a better humour when we meet again.”

A moment afterwards, and Caroline was alone with her own perturbed feelings and unpleasant, self-rebuking thoughts.  Still, she could not help muttering, as a kind of justification of her own conduct—­

“A perfect Hotspur!  It’s rather hard that a woman can’t speak to her husband, but he must fling himself off in this way.  Why didn’t he read his history, if it was so very interesting, and let me alone.  I don’t care about such things, and he knows it.”

After this, Mrs. Ellis fell into a state of deep and gloomy abstraction of mind.  Many images of the past came up to view, and, among them, some that it was by no means pleasant to look upon.  This was not the first time that her husband had gone off in a pet; but in no instance had he come home with a mind as clear as when he left her.  A deep sigh heaved the wife’s bosom as she remembered this; and, for some moments, she suffered from keen self-reproaches.  But, an accusing spirit quickly obliterated this impression.  In her heart she wrote many bitter things against her husband, and magnified habits and peculiarities into serious faults.

Poor, unhappy wife!  How little did she comprehend the fact that her husband’s feet were near the brink of a precipice, and that a fearful abyss of ruin was below; else would she have drawn him lovingly back, instead of driving him onward to destruction.

CHAPTER V.

Ellis, excited and angry, not only left his wife’s presence, but the house.  Repulsed by one pole, he felt the quick attraction of another.  Not a moment did he hesitate, on gaining the street, but turned his steps toward the room of Jerome, where a party of gay young men were to assemble for purposes of conviviality.

We will not follow him thither, nor describe the manner of his reception.  We will not picture the scene of revelry, nor record the coarse jests that some of the less thoughtful of the company ventured to make on the appearance of Ellis in their midst—­for, to most of his friends, it was no secret that his wife’s uncertain temper often caused him to leave his home in search of more congenial companionship.  Enough, that at eleven o’clock, Ellis left the house of Jerome, much excited by drink.

The pure, cool night air, as it bathed the heated temples of Henry Ellis, so far sobered him by the time he reached his own door, that a distant remembrance of what had occurred early in the evening was present to his thoughts; and, still beyond this, a remembrance of how he had been received on returning at a late hour in times gone by.  His hand was in his pocket, in search of his dead-latch key, when he suddenly retreated from the door, muttering to himself—­

“I’m not going to stand a curtain lecture!  There now!  I’ll wait until she’s asleep.”