He had waited all day to see her, and he had nothing to do until the evening, when he had to go to a dinner-party before the Assembly ball. He naturally thought of his club, as a quiet place where he could be alone with his annoyances and disappointments between three and four o’clock, and he took the elevated road as the shortest way of getting there. CHAPTER XVIII. Ralston was in a thoroughly bad humour when he reached his club. The absurdity of a marriage, which was practically no marriage at all, had been thrust upon him on the very first day, and he felt that he had been led into a romantic piece of folly, which could not possibly produce any good results, either at the present time or afterwards. He was as properly and legally the husband of Katharine as the law and the church could make him, and yet he could not even get an interview of a quarter of an hour with his wife. He could not count, with certainty, upon seeing her anywhere, except at such a public place as the ball they were both going to that night, under the eyes of all New York society, so far as it existed for them. The position was ludicrous, or would have been, had he not been the principal actor in the comedy. He was sure, too, that if Katharine had got any favourable answer from their uncle Robert, she would have said at least a word to this effect, even while she was in the act of thrusting him from the door. Two words, ‘all right,’ would have been enough. But she had only seemed anxious to get rid of him as quickly as possible, and he felt that he was not to be blamed for being angry. The details of the situation, as she had seen it, were quite unknown to him. He was not aware that Charlotte Slayback had been at luncheon, and had stayed until the last minute, nor that Katharine had really done everything in her power to make her mother go upstairs. The details, indeed, taken separately, were laughable in their insignificance, and it would hardly be possible for Katharine to explain them to him, so as to make him see their importance when taken all together. He was ignorant of them all, except of the fancied fact that Mrs. Lauderdale had been at the window of the library. Katharine had told him so, and had believed it herself, as was natural. She had not had time to explain why she believed it, and he would be more angry than ever if she ever told him that she had been mistaken, and that he might just as well have come and stayed as long as he pleased. He knew that a considerable time must have elapsed between the end of luncheon and his arrival at the door of the house; he supposed that Katharine had been alone with her mother and grandfather, as usual, and he blamed her for not exerting a little tact in getting her mother out of the way, when she must have had nearly an hour in which to do so. He went over and over all that he knew of the facts, and reached always the same conclusion--Katharine had not taken the trouble, and had probably only