“He sees but little of them, it is true,” she murmured, “and I might have let them remain up a little while longer, I’m too thoughtless, sometimes; but I get so tired of their noise and confusion, which is kept up all day long.”

And then she sighed.

Slowly, and with gentler feelings, Mrs. Ellis went down-stairs.  Better thoughts were in her mind, and she was inwardly resolving to act towards her husband in a different spirit from that just manifested.  On entering the nursery, where she had left him, she was not a little disappointed to find that he was not there.

“It isn’t possible that he has gone out!” was her instant mental ejaculation; and she passed quickly into the adjoining chamber to see if he were there.  It was empty.

For some time Mrs. Ellis stood in deep abstraction of mind; then, as a sigh heaved her bosom, she moved from the chamber and went down-stairs.  A glance at the hat-stand confirmed her fears; her husband had left the house.

“Ah, me!” she sighed.  “It is hard to know how to get along with him.  If every thing isn’t just to suit his fancy, off he goes.  I might humour him more than I do, but it isn’t in me to humour any one.  And for a man to want to be humoured!  Oh, dear! oh, dear! this is a wretched way to live; it will kill me in the end.  These men expect their own way in every thing, and if they don’t get it, then there is trouble.  I’m not fit to be Henry’s wife.  He ought to have married a woman with less independence of spirit; one who would have been the mere creature of his whims and fancies.”

Mrs. Ellis, with a troubled heart, went up to the room where so many of her lonely evening hours were spent.  Taking her work-basket, she tried to sew; but her thoughts troubled her so, that she finally sought refuge therefrom in the pages of an exciting romance.

The realizing power of imagination in Ellis was very strong.  While he paced the floor after his wife and children had left the room, there came to him such a vivid picture of the coldness and reserve that must mark the hours of that evening, if they were passed with Cara, that he turned from it with a sickening sense of pain.  Under the impulse of that feeling he left the house, but with no purpose as to where he was going.

For as long, perhaps, as half an hour, Ellis walked the street, his mind, during most of the time, pondering the events of the day.  His absence from business was so much lost, and would throw double burdens on the morrow, for, besides the sum of two hundred dollars to be returned to Wilkinson, he had a hundred to make up for another friend who had accommodated him.  But where was the money to come from?  In the matter of borrowing, Ellis had never done much, and his resources in that line were small.  His losses at the gaming-table added so much to the weight of discouragement under which he suffered!

“You play well.”  Frequently had the artful tempter, Carlton, lured his victim on by this and other similar expressions, during the time he had him in his power; and thus flattered, Ellis continued at cards until repeated losses had so far sobered him as to give sufficient mental resolution to enable him to stop.