“Indeed!” said I--“this must be looked into. It will not do for the wife to take the husband's business from him. It looks mischievous, Mrs. Porterfield--there's something wrong about it.” “Indeed there must be, Mr. Clifford, for only see how very sad it makes her. I declare, she looks this last few weeks like a very different woman. She does nothing now but mope. When she first came here she seemed to me so cheerful and happy.” All this was so much additional wormwood to my bitter. The change in Julia, which had even struck this blind old lady, corresponded exactly with the date of Edgerton's arrival. When I saw the earnest tenderness in his countenance as he watched her, while Mrs. Porterfield was speaking, I ceased to feel any sympathy for the intense sadness which I yet could not but see in hers. I turned away, and leaving the table soon after, went to our chamber, but the traces of writing were no longer to be seen. The voluminous manuscripts had all been carefully removed. I was about to leave the chamber when Julia met me at the door. “Come back; sit with me,” she said. “Why do you go off in such a hurry always? Once it was not so, Edward.” “What! are you for the honeymoon again?” “Do not smile so, and speak so irreverently!” she said, with a reproachful earnestness that certainly seemed to me very strange, thinking of her as I did. My evil spirit was silent. He lacked readiness to account for it. But he was not unadroit, and moved me to change the ground. “But what long writing is this, Julia?” “Ah! you are curious?” “Scarcely.” “TELL me that you are?” “What! at the expense of truth?” “No! but to gratify my desire. I hoped you were; but, curious or not, it is for you.” “Let me see it, then.” “Not yet; it is not ready.” “What! shall there be more of it?” “Yes, a good deal.” “Indeed! but why take this labor? Why not tell me what you have to say?” “I wish I could, but I can not. You do not encourage me.” “What encouragement do you wish to speak to your husband?” “Oh, much! Stay with me, dear husband.” “That will keep you from your writing.” “Ah! perhaps it will render it unnecessary.” “At all events it will keep me from mine;” and I prepared to go. She put her hand upon my shoulder--looked into my eyes pleadingly--hers were dewy wet--and spoke:-- “Do not go-stay with me dear husband, do stay. Stay only for half an hour.” Why did I not stay? I should ask that question of myself in vain. When the heart grows perverse, it acquires a taste for wilfulness. I, myself, longed to stay; could I have been persuaded that she certainly desired it, I should have found my sweetest pleasure in remaining. But there was the rub--that doubt! all that she said, looked, did, seemed, through the medium of the blind heart, to be fraudulent. “She would disguise her anxiety, that you should be gone. Leave her, and in twenty minutes she and Edgerton will be together.”