“Something troubles you, Alfred,” said Clara, a few days after she had informed him of the attempt to deprive her of her property in the West. “What is it? I will not be content to share only your happy feelings. Life, I know, is not all sunshine. Disappointments must come in the nature of things. You will have them and so will I. Let us, from the beginning, divide our griefs and fears as well as our joys and hopes.” And Alfred did not only look troubled; he felt also deeply depressed and anxious. Not a single new sitter had come to his rooms since his marriage; nor had he been able to get any thing to do that would yield even a small return, although he had offered to paint, at mere nominal prices, portraits from daguerreotypes—work that he had previously declined doing in a way to leave the impression that he looked upon the proposition as little less than a professional insult. On that very day he had paid out the last of his borrowed two hundred dollars. Where was the next supply to come from? How was he to obtain the sum he had expended, when the friend from whom he had received it should ask to have it returned? The first impulse of Ellison after this tender appeal from his wife, was to throw open to her the whole truth in regard to his circumstances. But an instant’s reflection caused him to shrink back from the exposure. Pride drew around him a mantle of concealment, while his heart became faint with the bare imagination of Clara’s discovering that he had, too evidently, been won more by her supposed wealth than her virtues. “It’s a little matter, not worth troubling you about,” was his evasive reply. “If it trouble you, let it trouble me. To share the pressure will make it lighter for both. Come, Alfred! Let us have no concealments. Do not fear my ability to stand by your side under any circumstances. When I gave you my heart, it was with no selfish feeling. I loved you purely and tenderly, and was prepared to go with you through the world amid good or evil report, joy or sorrow, health or sickness, prosperity or adversity. I promised not only with my lips but in my inmost spirit, that I would be to you all that a wife could or should be. Meet me then freely and fully. Let us begin without a concealment, and go through life as if we possessed but one mind and heart.” While Clara was speaking thus, Ellison partly shaded his face and tried to think to some right conclusion. But the more he thought, the more embarrassed did he feel, and the more entire became the confusion of his ideas. At length, finding it impossible to avoid uttering at least a portion of the truth, and perceiving that the truth must soon become known, he concluded to make at least some allusion to the embarrassment under which he was laboring. Suffering from a most oppressive sense of humiliation, he said—