Before marriage, he had rented a handsome house, and had it furnished in very good style, upon means which he had prudently saved from a liberal salary.  Into this, he at once introduced his young wife, who had already begun to feel her heart yearning for her mother’s voice, and her mother’s smile.  One young friend had been with her all the morning, but had left towards the middle of the day Alone, for the first time, since her hurried marriage, her feelings became somewhat saddened in their hue.  But as the hour approached for her husband to come home, those feelings gate place, in a degree, to an ardent desire for his return, the result of deep and fervent love for him.  She had sat for some moments, expecting to hear him at the door, when the bell rung, and she started to her feet, and stood on the floor, ready to spring forward the moment he should enter the room.  No one, however, came in, and her heart sunk in her bosom with the disappointment.  In a moment after, the servant handed her a note, the seal of which she broke hastily.  It was from her husband, and ran thus:—­

“DEAR CONSTANCE:—­An accumulation of business in my absence so presses upon me now, that I cannot possibly come so great a distance to dinner, at least for this day.  It may likewise keep me away until eight or nine o’clock this evening.  But keep a good heart, dear; our meeting will be pleasanter for the long absence—­Adieu,

THEODORE.”

The note dropped from her hand, and she sank into a chair, overcome with a feeling of strong disappointment.  To wait until eight or nine o’clock in the evening, before she should see him, when the morning had appeared lengthened to a day!  O, it seemed as if she could not endure the wearisome interval!

As for Wilmer, the truth was, he found himself so much under the influence of the liberal quantity of brandy which he had taken, that he dared not go home to Constance.  He would not have appeared before her as he was, for the world.  It was under the consciousness of his condition, that he wrote the billet, which his young wife had received.  After doing so, he went to bed at a public house, and slept until towards evening.  When he awoke, Arnold was sitting in the chamber.  Some feelings of bitter regret for the pains which his absence must have caused his young wife, passed through his mind, as he aroused himself.  These were soon drowned by a few glasses of wine, which his friend had already ordered to be sent up.  That friend, let it here be remarked, was not a professed gambler—­nor had he any sinister designs in urging on Wilmer as he was doing.  But he was a man of loose morals, and, therefore, really believed that he was doing him a service in urging him to make an effort to get upon his feet by means of the gambling-table.  Knowing the young man’s high-toned feelings—­and how utterly he must, from his character, condemn anything like play, he had purposely sought to obscure his perceptions by inducing him to drink freely.  In this, he had succeeded.