“We are?”

The tone and look with which this was said chilled the warm feelings of the young man.

“I am, at least,” said he, in a changed voice.

“And I am not,” as promptly, and much more decidedly, replied Esther.

“Oh, yes you are.”  This was said with a suddenly assumed, half playful, yet earnest manner.  “I have bought tickets, and we will go to-night.”

“The least you could have done was to have asked me before you bought tickets,” returned Esther.  “I wish to go somewhere else to-night.”

“But, as I have the tickets now, you will go, of course.  To-morrow night will do as well for a visit.”

“I wish to make it to-night.”

“Esther, you are unreasonable.”  Huntley knit his brows and compressed his lips.

“We are quite even then.”  The pretty lip of the bride curled.

“Esther!” said Huntley, assuming a calm but cold exterior, and speaking in a firm voice.  “I have bought tickets for the opera to-night, thinking that to go would give you pleasure, and now my wish is that you accompany me.”

“A wish that you will certainly not have gratified.  I believe I am your wife, not your slave to command.”

There was something so cutting in the way this was said, that Huntley could not bear it.  Without a word he arose, and, taking his hat, left the house.  In a fever of excitement he walked the street for an hour and a half, and then, scarcely reflecting upon what he did, went to the opera.  But the music was discord in his ears, and he left before the performance was half over.

The moment Esther heard the street-door close upon her husband, she arose and went from the room where she was sitting with her aunt, moving erect and with a firm step.  Mrs. Carlisle did not see her for two hours.  The tea bell rang, but she did not come down from her chamber, where, as the aunt supposed, she was bitterly repenting what she had done.  In this, however, she was mistaken, as was proved, when, on joining her in her room for the purpose of striving to console her, the conversation with which our story opens took place.

When the fit of weeping with which Esther received the reproof her aunt felt called upon to give, had subsided, Mrs. Carlisle said, in a most solemn and impressive manner,

“What has occurred this evening may prove the saddest event of your whole life.  There is no calculating the result.  No matter whose the fault, the consequences that follow may be alike disastrous to the happiness of both.  Are you prepared, thus early, for a sundering of the sacred bonds that have united you?  And yet, even this may follow.  It has followed with others, and may follow with you.  Oh! the consequences of a first quarrel!  Who can anticipate them?”

The voice of Mrs. Carlisle trembled, and then sank almost into a sob.  Her manner more than her words startled Esther.