ort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years

not entered his heart. His wife's faded face had not for a second disturbed his loyalty; but now the beauty of this other woman aroused within him long dormant characteristics, like some wonderful stimulant, not only for the body, but for the soul. When he looked in Ida Slome's beautiful face he seemed to drink in an elixir of life. And yet, down at the ro

, and at Maria, taking painful stitches in her dresser cove

"You have had a long evenin

hinking of the torn wall-paper, and she

er since I went?" inqui

s,

d more going on." Harry then went close to Mrs. Addix, sitting with her head resting o

ot stir; she con

in a louder tone, but still th

her violently by the shoulder. "Come, Mrs. Addix," said he, in a s

ust want to go. At last he roused her, and she stood up with a dazed expression. Maria got her bonnet and shawl, and she gazed at them vaguely, as if she were so far removed from the flesh t

stairs, and do not

until she was safely down, and th

," he said, laughing. "Not very

replied Mar

door of the room which had been papered that day. It o

's see the improvements," he

e been difficult to say whether triumphant mal

om, with Maria slinking at his heels. Th

the bay-window with his lamp. "C

ancestry to make the question of a struggle possible when the duty of truth stared her, as now, in the face. She simply did not speak at onc

uppose. You can't trust anybody unless you are right at their heels. Confound 'em

tore that paper off

face went white. For a second he tho

?" he

paper off," r

u?

hit the child like a pistol-

she said, "nor new furniture." Her eyes me

t the child's eyes looked like her dead mother's, her

nt Mrs. Addix] "was asleep. I was all alone. I g

. He did not look nor wa

You can have your room newly papered now, if you want it," said he, in a choking voice. "Father will send you over to El

any," said Maria,

baby," s

nd realized that her father

ed out, convulsively. "Mother picked out that

carried the child back to her own room. "Now

n bed, her father came back into the room. He held a small

her had," said Harry. "Now I want

it, father,"

t up and

sleep, and went out of the room. She heard him, with sharpened hearing, enter her mother's room. She remembered about the paper, and the new furniture, and how she was to have a new mother, and how she had torn the paper

ia, in her fit of futile rebellion, had torn. He carefully tore off still more, making a clean strip of the paper where Maria had made a ragged one. When he had fini

or and dread. For the first time he deliberated whether he was about to do a wise thing: for the first time, the image of Ida Slome's smiling beauty, which was ever evident to his fancy, produced in him something like doubt and consternation. He looked about the room, and remembered the old pieces of furniture which had that day been carried away. He looked at the places where they had stood. Then he remembered his dead wife, as he had never remembered her before, with an anguish of

d involuntarily; the appearance of youth returned. He curled his mustache and moved his head this way and that. He thought about some new clothes which he was to have. He owned to himself, with perfect ingenuousness, that he was, in his way, as a man, as good-l

," he said to himself, as he began to undress. He went to sleep thinkin