The ordeal closed, but was renewed and repeated day after day, till all the poetry and romance connected with our artistic acquisitions was thoroughly destroyed in my wife's mind. They became, as I could easily observe, positively odious to her, and, doubtless, could she have obeyed the promptings of her feelings, she would have trampled on them, and cast them into the street. But in this disappointment she became so forlorn, so passively desperate, that my heart almost burst at beholding her. Since my discovery in the conservatory I had often used it for watching my wife,--not of course with any miserable design of playing the spy upon, her,--but to observe her various moods, in order to adapt, my own conduct and the progress of my system to them. One night, after we had entertained a party of visitors, whom I had made instruments of torture to my wife by their common-place eulogies of Frank's contributions, I ascended my perch in the conservatory. She was sitting in her apartment, her hands, listlessly clasped, resting on her knees, her form bowed with the most profound dejection, coupled with that indescribable aspect of cold, desperate defiance which I have previously noticed, exhibited in her countenance and position. 'Oh! Frank, Frank!' she seemed to say, 'would that I had forsaken all and fled to Italy with you. There, the creations of your taste and genius would have afforded a solace. Here they are but torments.' 'You shall go to Italy, Evelyn, and have your fill of Frank's society,' said I in my imaginary comment. 'But not yet; the time has not yet come.' Having permitted her to learn the disappointment derived from the works of art associated with Frank's memory, I now brought into action a scheme for teaching her the pleasure which I could afford. Before our hunting expedition I had purchased a spacious and beautiful mansion, and engaged upholsterers from New York to decorate it, during our absence, in the most elegant style their taste could design. A large apartment had been constructed by my order for the purpose of a private theatre.