“O for a woman’s soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!” cried Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding under this white rose. Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before her mind’s eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester’s tall form hurrying blindly from the boudoir followed by his wife’s cold glance. The next minute the exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady’s attention, and with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down the shades, and the episode was over. Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her solitary breakfast—Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her—the door of Ona’s room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to the following exclamation: “What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born to adorn? I had rather die!” And Paula feeling as if she had received the key to the enigma of the last night’s unaccountable manifestations, was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis, “And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage—” There the door swung to. An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered her carriage for an early shopping excursion.