“Don’t say that. Every word you say makes me reproach myself more. I am not heartless, though I see now how selfish it was of me to sneak away as I did. You will hardly believe that I thought I was doing what was best for my husband as well as myself. I thought he was too young to be burdened with a wife. We did not suit each other; I seemed to irritate him to worse brutality; we were spoiling each other’s lives and our own.” “You were quite right to come away. He would only have crushed your life out by his coarse cruelty before now, if you had stayed with him. How could you, with your sensitive feelings and cultivated tastes, bear with that uncouth boor? I used to wonder at your patience with him when I first knew you in town with him.” “I was wrong, though,” said Annie, gravely. “If I thought I could do him any good I would go back now.” “I beg you not to do anything so rash,” said Colonel Richardson, hastily. “Your husband is worse than an uncouth lad now; he is a coarse, savage-tempered man. Lilian--Mrs. Falconer--his own sister, is afraid of him; and you know she is not meek-spirited.” “What does he say of me? Does he never speak about me? Do you know?” “The last time his sister saw him he told her that, if he ever met his wife again--and he used language which neither she nor I could repeat to you--he would ‘crush the beauty out of the face that made a fool of him.’ Forgive my repeating his words to you; I think they will be the best warning I can give you to keep out of his reach.” Annie sighed. “You don’t make me afraid of him; you only make me pity him as I would a fierce hound who had been unwisely treated. If Harry were to crush my face, as he said, in a fit of passion, it would be the one thing which would make him treat me tenderly ever afterward.” Colonel Richardson looked surprised. “You almost make me bold enough to wonder----” “Why I left him? I suppose my strongest reason really was that he was unbearable to me. His tenderness was odious as his anger, and worse than his neglect. I should dislike him more than ever now; but I should know how to treat him more wisely.” Colonel Richardson understood women too well to say more on that subject. He turned the conversation. “Mrs. Falconer expects her brother William next week,” he said. “Shall I bring him to the theater and see if he knows you?” Annie caught eagerly at the idea of seeing her favorite William again. She had nothing to fear from his knowing where she was, and she was anxious to find out whether he was growing into a less worthless man than his brothers. He was now eighteen. She was anxious, too, to learn whether he still retained the affectionate remembrance of her. So her last words to Colonel Richardson were a repetition of her injunction to bring him to the theater without any warning that he would see her. She did not doubt that he would know her, especially as he was the one member of the family who knew she was on the stage.