His voice was calm, and its firmness destroyed what slender encouragement she might have drawn from the scene with his child, to hope for some modification of his resolution. "Will you write to me, at regular intervals, to give me news of Belle?" "Certainly, if such is your wish." "And yourself? you will be careful of your health, will you not? And if I can ever serve you in any way, you will let me know?" "It is not likely that you can; thank you." There was a silence of some moments. Sarah stood playing with the tassel of her morning robe, pale and composed. "Sarah!" Lewis took her hand. "We have both been hasty, both violent! Unfeeling as you think me, and as I may have seemed in this affair, believe me that it almost kills me to part from you so coldly. It is not like me to retract a determination, but if you will say now what you did last night--'Do not go!' I will stay, and be as good a husband to you as I can. Shall we not forgive, and try to forget?" The demon of resentful pride was not so easily exorcised. At a breath of repentance--a suggestion of compromise, the fell legion rallied an impregnable phalanx. She was frozen, relentless; her eyes, black and haughty, met his with an answer her tongue could not have framed in words. "I have nothing to say!" "'Nothing!' The ocean must then separate us for years--it may be forever!" "It was your choice. I will not reverse it." "Not if you knew that if you let me go I would never return?" "Not if I knew that you would never return!" Without another word, without a farewell look, or the hand-grasp mere strangers exchange, he left her there--the stony monument of her ill-directed life and affections; the victim of a worldly mother and a backbiting tongue! CHAPTER XVII. "How gay Mrs. Hammond has grown lately!" said Mrs. Greyling, the fashionable critic of the ---- House drawing-room. "Do you see that she is actually waltzing to-night? She moves well, too! That pearl-colored moire antique is handsome, and must have cost every cent of nine dollars a yard. She is partial to heavy silks, it seems. It gives an air of sameness to her dress; otherwise she shows very tolerable taste." "I have heard it said that she was a regular dowdy before she was married," observed Mrs. Parton, who was also on the "committee of censure"--a self-appointed organization, which found ample employment in this crowded nest of pleasure-seekers. "Her husband is perpetually making her presents, and she dresses to please him." "Humph! I distrust these pattern couples! 'My husband doesn't approve of my doing this--won't hear of my acting so!' are phrases easily learned, and sound so fine that one soon falls into the habit of using them. What a flirt Mrs. Benson is! That is the fifth young man she has danced with this evening. I pity her husband and baby!"