Saying which, he drew a cigar and match-box from his pocket, and lighting the former, placed it between his lips, and moved leisurely down the street.

The meeting with Wilkinson has already been described.

Scarcely less startled was Ellis at the sudden apparition of Mrs. Wilkinson than her husband had been.  He remained only a few moments after they retired.  Then he turned his steps again homeward, with a clearer head and heavier heart than when he refused to enter, in fear of what he called a “curtain lecture.”

Many painful thoughts flitted through his mind as he moved along with a quick pace.

“I wish Cara understood me better, or that I had more patience with her,” he said to himself.  “This getting angry with her, and going off to drinking parties and taverns is a bad remedy for the evil, I will confess.  It is wrong in me, I know.  Very wrong.  But I can’t bear to be snapped, and snubbed up, and lectured in season and out of season.  I’m only flesh and blood.  Oh dear!  I’m afraid evil will come of it in the end.  Poor Wilkinson!  What a shock the appearance of his wife must have given him!  It set every nerve in my body to quivering.  And it was all my fault that he wasn’t at home with his watching wife and sick child.  Ah me!  How one wrong follows another!”

Ellis had reached his own door.  Taking out his night-key, he applied it to the latch; but the door did not open.  It had been locked.

“Locked out, ha!” he ejaculated quickly; and with a feeling of anger.  His hand was instantly on the bell-pull, and he jerked it three or four times vigorously; the loud and continued ringing of the bell sounding in his ears where he stood on the doorstep without.  A little while he waited, and then the ringing was renewed, and with a more prolonged violence than at first.  Then he listened, bending his ear close to the door.  But he could detect no movement in the house.

“Confound it!” came sharp and impatiently from his lips.  “If I thought this was designed, I’d—­”

He checked himself, for just at that instant he saw a faint glimmer of light through the glass over the door.  Then he perceived the distant shuffle of feet along the passage floor.  There was a fumbling at the key and bolts, and then the half-asleep and half-awake servant admitted him.

“I didn’t know you was out, sir,” said the servant, “or I wouldn’t have locked the door when I went to bed.”

Ellis made no reply, but entered and ascended to his chamber.  Cara was in bed and asleep, or apparently so.  Her husband did not fail to observe a certain unsteady motion of the lashes that lay over her closed eyes; and he was not far wrong in his impression that she was awake, and had heard his repeated ringing for admission.  His belief that such was the case did not lessen the angry feelings produced by the fact of having the key of his own door turned upon him.

But slumber soon locked his senses into oblivion, and he did not awake until the sun was an hour above the horizon.