“Two o’clock!” said Mrs. Tremaine, glancing at the _pendule_ on the chimney-piece—“two o’clock! Good morning, Miss Austin. How surprised Tremaine will be to hear that you are really going to marry Bob Dunning.” And Robert Dunning and Fanny Austin were married—and never was there a happier home than theirs. The wife watched for her husband’s step as the maiden watches for that of her lover. Daily she met him with smiles, while her heart throbbed with a love as warm and as pure as that she had vowed at the altar. And Robert Dunning idolized his wife, and his fine endowments drew around him a host of admirers and friends, until Fanny’s former acquaintances, including Mrs. Tremaine, contended for the honor of an invitation to the gifted circle, which weekly met at the house of Mrs. Dunning. CHAPTER III. “So it has come at last—ruin, final, irretrievable ruin—every thing gone—the very house I’m in mortgaged. Confusion! But I’ll not give up yet—no, not yet! I’ll see Browne to-night—what if we should fail? But that is impossible. Browne has been too long engaged in getting his living from the dear public to let it scrutinize very closely the process by which the needful is obtained. If I thought I could win any thing at play—but I have had such an infernal run of ill luck lately that there is no chance in that quarter. Well—well! There appears to be no alternative—and when it is once done, then ho! for England!” Thus soliloquized Gustavus Tremaine, as he sat at a late hour in the morning sipping his coffee in his room, for his wife and he had long ceased to take their meals together. Separate rooms and separate tables had served to complete the estrangement which caprice and ill temper had begun, and they now exhibited that pitiable spectacle of a house divided against itself. And what is more pitiable than to see those who should mutually encourage and support each other, who should bear one another’s burdens, and in the spirit of blessed charity endure all things, and hope all things—what is more pitiable than to see them unkind, self-willed, bandying bitter sarcasms and rude reproaches?