“She doesn’t go out again. She has done it for the last time!” persisted the Professor, doggedly. “My dear friend, there is something more the matter than you have told me,” said the Baron, looking anxiously into Ricardo’s face; “you are not yourself this morning! Is there anything else, beside your wife’s very natural desire to see a little of the great world, that troubles you?” “A great deal more,” exclaimed the Professor, “my life with her is becoming a hell upon earth! I can stand it no longer! You know why I married her, Karl! A coarse, uneducated, ignorant clod (as you yourself called her)--I gave her my name and the sanctity of my home, because she brought my Leonora to me. The great object of my life seemed about to be realised--my yearnings set at rest! I made this clod my wife--no! no! not my wife; I will never give her that sacred title--but I made her mine by law, so that I might keep Leonora ever by my side. And now--can you believe it?--she refuses any more to sit for Leonora!” “O! you must be mistaken,” cried Von Steinberg, “Hannah may be tired of sitting for a while--you forget the strain it is upon her constitution--but she can never have intended you to understand that she would never sit for you again.” “She said it, and she meant it. I could read it in her evil eyes,” replied Ricardo, steadfastly. “She told me only this morning, when I asked if we could have a séance together this evening, that she had made up her mind to sit with me no more. She said worse than that,” continued the Professor, in a breaking voice, “she declared that Leonora--my Leonora--was sick and tired of me--that she said she had come often enough--and expressed her determination not to appear again, unless it were for the amusement of a crowd, such as you gathered round you last night--a crowd who cares nothing for her personally,--only to see the wonder of her materialisation. And I--_I_--loved her so!” he gasped out, as he hid his face from observation, and gave vent to a weak flood of tears. Karl von Steinberg was much shocked. He was really attached to the Professor, and his conscience pricked him sorely, lest he should, by indirect means, have had some share in bringing this trouble on his head. He turned with him down a narrow lane, where they would be more sheltered from observation, and waited silently until Ricardo’s emotion had subsided. “How weak--how unmanly--you must think me!” he said at last, as he lifted his worn face and smiled faintly at the Baron, “but I have been much shaken lately! Hannah’s insolence to me--her over-bearing manner--the way in which she uses Leonora’s sacred name in my presence--has sapped my courage! “O! what an egregious fool I was, not to listen to your kindly advice, when you warned me that to marry her would ruin me, soul and body! It has been just that! Were it not for cowardice, I would put an end to my life to-morrow! There is nothing left me worth living for!”