The first cloud obscuring the heaven of Clara’s perfect happiness as a wife, had passed. The sun shone again, but never with its ineffable brightness. Love’s perfect Eden was forever lost. Dr. Delano and his wife had been keeping house a little over a year. Clara performed all wifely duties with perfect care. She had been apparently satisfied with Albert’s course to Ella. She made no complaints, was cheerful always, received all his friends with a cordial grace that pleased him well, and if her caresses had lost their old tenderness, he had not wondered at the change—alas! he had not even noticed it;—and yet Clara believed that the trusting, childlike happiness that had been theirs at first, would, by some miracle, return. She cherished this hope as the drowning cling to straws. Ardent and romantic in her nature, feeling certain that her love was perfect and could meet all the needs of Albert, she was terribly shaken by the discovery that the petting, the flattery, the languishing ways of Ella, charmed him more than anything else in the world. She did not blame him nor Ella. It was inevitable that they should like each other, but there were times when her life seemed unendurable. Ella was often at the house, and Clara received her as she did many of Albert’s friends, with whom she had no special sympathy; but when one day Albert reproached her for showing no affection to Ella, and dwelt upon Ella’s virtues, among which were her simplicity, her affection, her childlike innocence, Clara’s patience gave way: “I do not love her,” she said, “and you know it well. Why should I play the hypocrite? I will treat her well, because she is your friend. We pretend that we have a higher guide than mere conventional rules, which would forbid your ever asking me to receive a woman who stands between me and your love. Ask no more of me, Albert,” she said, with an expression he but partly comprehended. “Ask no more of me, Albert, or I shall fail you, not only in this but in all things.” Sometimes the temptation was great to open Albert’s eyes as to Ella’s childlike innocence, but Clara was really above using such a weapon against her rival; besides, she doubted that they could be opened. Ella was, apparently, without a single flaw in his eyes.