“I cannot tell you of that parting,” she finally resumed; “it was almost like parting soul from body, and I shall never forget the look that was on my Charlie’s face as he stood on the pier at Liverpool and watched the vessel that bore us away out of sight. “We reached home just in season to be recognized by papa, to receive his dying blessing and his bidding to care tenderly for mamma, and then he was gone. Our mother was utterly prostrated by his death and the watching during the long weeks of his illness, and for months she, too, seemed to be upon the borders of the grave. “Meantime, I heard regularly from Charlie, and every letter told me of some delay regarding the decision upon his appointment, but it was sure to be all right in the end, he said, and he would let me know the very moment it was decided. “You can easily realize that those months were anxious ones to me, for I feared, as the guilty always fear, detection, while, too, the deception I was practicing was inexpressibly galling to me. Mamma rallied after a time, and for a little while we thought she would recover, but the improvement was not lasting, and it soon became evident that consumption had fastened upon her. “It was nearly five months since my return, and I began to be very unhappy, for there was still no favorable news from my husband. One day I was sitting alone in my room writing to him, and feeling very much depressed, when Nellie suddenly burst in upon me, her face all aglow, and bearing a telegram in her hand. “‘Estelle, what will you give me for good news at last?’ she cried, gayly, and holding the telegram above her head, out of my reach. “‘I will give you a hundred dollars, Nell, if it is good news,’ I answered, springing up to take it from her, my heart beating high with hope, for I felt almost sure that the message could contain nothing else. “I tore it open with trembling eagerness, only to find these words within: “‘Lost; appointment given to a man named Wilmot. Will write particulars.’ “It was a dreadful blow! Nellie had read the message over my shoulder, and for a moment we were both so paralyzed that we could only look into each other’s face in dumb agony. Then I remembered nothing more for a week, while for a month I did not leave my bed. During this time Charlie wrote, bitterly regretting that he had sent me the message, but saying he had promised to let me know as soon as the matter was decided, and on the impulse of the moment, his judgment blunted by his own disappointment, he had cabled what afterward he realized must have been a cruel blow to me. He said that money had bought up the position, while he had been so certain that the influence at work for him was stronger than any amount of bribery could be. ‘Still,’ he cheerfully concluded, ‘he would try for something else, and do his utmost to relieve me from my embarrassing position.’