Angered one night because Evelyn had left him a small portion of his own travelling expenses to pay, he rang up the servants of the hotel at midnight, and though we were to start on the following morning at break of day, he ordered his luggage to be transported and his bed made in a room at the most distant end of the corridor, thus making himself and his wife of a month, the laughing-stock of the hotel. We do not pretend the man was altogether devoid of good impulses; but the evil of his nature was strong—the good feeble. He was ungrateful, heartless, unprincipled. Evelyn had before known only the reverse of the picture; she had been adored, petted, spoiled. How could she conceive so exceptional a character as that of Sir Percy? How bear with him? Dear friends, she did bear with him, and she was not wretched, for she now knew that all trials are the just retribution for past sins committed, past duties unperformed. Alas! we cannot escape the past, still does it pursue us like an avenging spectre; and so she resolved to endure all, looking no longer to earth for bliss, living ever in the sweet calm and beauty of the inner life, which proceeds from the Christ who shines on the souls of all who will receive him as the pure and perfect law. No longer spell-bound by her passionate love for D’Arcy, he was yet dear—dearer to her than ever, for to him alone she owed all her strength to bear, all her courage to do; through him she had been enabled to behold the radiant, the immeasurable life of the beyond, as the one great reality of our being, compared to which this earth life, did it last a century, is but as a span, a point in eternity, “a dream when one awaketh.” Oh, had she realized these blessed truths in earliest youth, how different might have been her fate! But, repulsed by narrow-minded sectarianism, miscalled religion, she had strayed without a guide in devious paths. The idea of a future existence had then loomed darkly before her young imaginations as a vague terror, a portentous and lurid superstition forcing her to an unwilling lip-service of prayer. Now it was a glorious inspiration—hourly influencing her, and turning the common incidents of life into occasions for thanksgiving. For she knew that the Infinite Father was calling his erring child home through her loves and through her griefs. With this sweet conviction can tribulation harm her? I trow not. Rather do her crosses and her trials cause her lonely and unsatisfied heart to rise each day more purely, tenderly, devotedly, upward towards God. Then, too, she tremblingly believes she may, in a brighter sphere, be united in the sweet connubial tie to one who shall fully realize the ideal of her soul. So, loving and beloved, she will no longer dwell “As one companionless In essence, heart distressed and pining ever With anguished yearning for a tenderness Forever widely sought, experienced never.”[3]