At last, the clock struck, and he took her to the lounge and laid her down. “I have not another moment,” he said, “you will let me go now, like the good, brave darling you are?” “Yes,” she whispered, in a faint, unnatural tone. “I’ll let you go now. Tell me good-by once more.” “Good-by, my darling wife.” “Good-by, my darling husband.” She put her lips up, and he pressed a quick kiss on them, and was gone. On the landing outside Mauma was sitting, erect and repellent, in every line of figure and face. “Go to your mistress, Mauma,” said Leith. “I trust you to look after her and take good care of her.” “Yes--bress de Lord, I say!” replied Mauma, with cold contempt. “It’s a pow’ful good thing nobody don’ trus’ _you_--fur that or nuthin’! Dee’d find deeselves mistaken, ef dee did.” With a smile of amusement, the man shook off the sadness that had clung to him, in coming from that room, and said in a gay, though carefully lowered tone: “You’re just the same as ever, Mauma, I see! Well, I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t have you changed for anything. I always told your mistress that you were the one woman I had found it impossible to win! So, you see, you have a unique charm for me.” “I hope to de Lord some woman’ll pay you back fur what you’se bin mek dat angil-child suffer,” was the solemn response, “en you mark my words--de day’s gwine come!” With his unfailing instinct to escape from what was unpleasant, Leith hurried down the stairs, threw on his coat, and let himself out into the street. As the door closed behind him, Mauma, bending over her little mistress, found that she was in a dead faint. Restoratives were used, and she at last recovered consciousness; but that evening’s ordeal was followed by a long attack of fever, in which death, after promising relief for a while, withdrew and left her to her life of misery. “There is one blessing in this illness,” Mr. Manning said to Mrs. Bryan, when he called one day to inquire for the invalid, “she never knew the day of her divorce. Now she will just recognize the fact that it is past, and that she’s no longer that scoundrel’s wife. A more cold-blooded, selfish, unmitigated brute I never came across, and it’s a blessed thing she’s got the divorce, poor little thing! All the same, it has broken her heart.” By the time the invalid was able to go about again, the papers mentioned the marriage of Herbert Leith, in Spain. Nothing but the bare fact reached the ears of Mimi, who still bears his name and wears his ring, and bullies Mauma and pampers Fleecy, and looks almost as childish, though never as pretty again, as she did on the night of that parting. The Thirst and the Draught The Thirst and the Draught “The thirst which from the soul doth rise Doth ask a draught divine!” “Most extraordinary!”