"All at once I heard a noise of wheels in front of the house. A sharp apprehension broke up my dreams. I sprang out of bed, lifted the lace curtain, and saw my husband's light buggy drawn up on the carriage-drive. While Tom was packing a valice under the seat, Mr. Lawrence stood near drawing on his gloves. "He was going without one word of farewell. The thought made me wild. I flung up the window with a violence that tore the valenciennes from the sleeve of my night-dress, and called out,-- "'Not yet, not yet!' "He did not hear me, or perhaps would not. That instant he sprang into the buggy, snatched the reins from Tom, and drove off. As he passed a curve in the road, he drew up and looked back at the house, as if unable to leave it without a farewell-glance. I was still at the window, half shrouded by the curtains, but leaning out, with wild unconsciousness of my position. He waved one hand, drew his horse up with the other so sharply that the buggy was half wheeled across the road; the next instant the horse made a plunge forward, seemingly unmanageable, and in an instant bore him out of sight. "I knelt by the window a long time, looking upon the spot where he had disappeared in blank despair. In one minute my life seemed to have become a barren waste. Points in the landscape that had been so beautiful over-night, struck me with a dreary appearance of change. My eyes grew hot and ached with the pain of my sudden desolation. I could neither weep nor cry out, but knelt there with a dull sense of sorrow and utter loneliness creeping over me. Burdened with these wretched feelings, I crept back to my couch, and burying my face in the pillows, suffered silently." CHAPTER LXXI. AWAY FROM HOME. "This house is not the same now; its stillness oppresses me, its magnificence palls on my senses. Wherever I turn, some memory starts up to pain me. Why have I filled every beautiful spot with associations that sting me so?