Having delivered himself calmly and firmly of this despotic speech, Harry folded his arms across his broad chest, and leaning his autocratic back against the chimney-piece, stood looking as if he felt himself completely “monarch of all he surveyed,” his wife included. Meanwhile a fearful struggle between good and evil was proceeding in Alice’s mind; a kind word or look would instantly have caused the good to triumph: but her husband stood cold and inexorable as a statue of Fate. Then the same personage who tempted Eve to the sin which lost her Eden, suddenly caused to flash across Alice’s recollection all Mrs. Crossman’s arguments, and she determined to follow her advice, to “pluck up a spirit, and treat her husband as he treated her,” &c. Accordingly, by a great effort restraining her tears, which during Harry’s harangue had begun to flow, she looked up with flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, as she replied: “The obedience you require is not that of a wife but of a slave, and I refuse to yield it. You have treated me unkindly and unjustly, and I will not sacrifice myself to oblige you.” Harry made no reply, though his lips moved convulsively, as though he could scarcely command himself to keep silence; then snatching pen and ink, he scrawled a hasty note, sealed and directed it, and rising, quitted the room without uttering a single word. As the door closed behind him, the tears which Alice had hitherto with such difficulty repressed, burst forth unrestrained. She was roused from a paroxysm of weeping by the sound of horses’ feet, and springing to the window, reached it in time to see Harry give a note to a groom, who rode away at speed in the direction of Allerton House; then mounting his own horse, he also galloped off, ere Alice could muster sufficient presence of mind to attempt to recall him. CHAPTER XXVI.--THE ATMOSPHERE REMAINS CLOUDY.