“Love is blind, you know, dear!” Clara replied to this, with a lightness of tone that surprised Ellison; “and one who is loved will find it no hard matter to excuse a little wandering sometimes from the path of prudence. Fortunately, in our case, the error you so grieve over will be of no account, for it happens that I have a few thousand dollars independent of the property in dispute, which is now as much yours as mine. I ought to have said this to you before, but deemed it of little consequence.” The response of Ellison to this announcement was not so cordial as his wife had expected. His sense of humiliation was too strong to admit a free pulsation of his heart after the external pressure was removed. “For your sake, Clara,” said he, “I rejoice to hear this. But I feel none the less conscious of having acted wrong.” “Come, come, Alfred! This is a weakness. Am I not your wife? and do I not love you tenderly and truly?” “I do not doubt it, Clara. But it looks so as if I had been governed by mercenary views in offering you marriage when I ought to have known, and did know in fact, that I was not able to make your external condition as comfortable as it should be.” “Alfred! don’t speak in this way. Do I not know you to be incapable of such baseness? I could not wrong, by an unjust suspicion, one whom I love as my own life.” And Clara drew her arm about her husband’s neck affectionately, and pressed her lips upon his forehead. “Forgive this weakness,” said the young man. “It is wrong, I know.” “Yes, it is wrong, very wrong. So now, let the shadow pass from your brow, and the light come back again.” [Illustration] But the weight was not removed from Ellison’s feelings. And though he swept the shadow from his brow at the word of Clara, it did not pass from his heart. It was a great relief for the moment to know that he possessed the means of support for himself and wife until he could win his way to professional eminence; but this fact did not heal the wound his natural independence and sense of honor had received. Even in the language Clara had used as a means of encouragement, he saw rebuke, though he knew that it was given unconsciously.