There was a change in Ellison. Clara perceived it from the moment he avowed his intention to return to the East. Its meaning she could not tell. For some time before, a certain coldness, or more properly speaking, a reserve, had appeared in his manner toward her. Slight causes, too, had been productive of disturbance. But now he was more tender in his intercourse with her than he had ever been, and seemed to have scarcely a thought that did not involve her comfort and happiness. His affection for their babe appeared every moment to increase. Clara would often find him looking at it with a tenderness of expression that was almost tearful.

On arriving in Philadelphia, Ellison avoided all the relatives of his wife. He neither received nor returned the visit of any one of them. Contrary to the expectation of Clara, he did not take a room for professional use, nor did he say any thing about resuming his work as an artist. Immediately on his return, he purchased stocks to the value of five thousand five hundred dollars, the certificates for which, with four hundred dollars in money, he placed in her hands, saying, as he did so,

“I have kept five hundred dollars for a particular purpose.”

For about a week he remained nearly the whole time in the house, yet exhibiting many evidences of a disturbed and active mind.

One morning, after kissing his wife and the babe that lay in her arms, with visible emotion, he went away. Contrary to what had been his custom since their return, he did not come back during the forenoon, and was absent at dinner-time. A feeling of uneasiness—a vague dread of some impending evil—had weighed upon the mind of Clara ever since he had gone out, and this now changed into anxiety not unmingled with alarm. Slowly the afternoon wore away and night came sadly down. As long as she could see the forms of passengers in the street, Clara stood at the window, waiting and watching for her husband. Then she sat listening for the sound of his entrance below, starting and hearkening more intently, as one after another opened and shut the door. But supper-time came, and he was still away. All night he remained absent. Oh, what a night that was for Clara! Sleep visited her not until day-dawn, and then it came with frightful visions that broke the rest so much needed almost as soon as sweet oblivion had come upon her senses. Early in the day a letter was placed in her hands. She knew the writing to be that of her husband. Breaking the seal, she read,

“My Dear Clara,—I leave you for a time. How long the time will be, Heaven only knows! What it has cost me to break away from you and our sweet babe, no one but myself will ever know. I meant all for the best; it was to increase your property—not with a reckless indifference as to consequences—that I made that ruinous adventure in the West. The failure almost broke my heart. But I will retrieve the loss. I vowed to do so when the disaster came; and I mean to fulfill that vow, if it cost me the labor of a whole life. Happily, enough is left to keep you and our babe from want. Bear my absence, if you can, without repining. Do not think my affection for you has grown cold; it has but increased in fervor since our marriage, and absence will make it the more intense. Ah, me! How do our errors, like seed cast into the ground, reproduce themselves a hundred fold! I erred at first, and error has since followed me like a shadow. May Heaven keep you, my dear wife, until my return. It is best for me to go away. To be happy under present circumstances, is impossible. I am crushed to the earth, and if I remain here, will lie powerless. It may be a weakness in me to feel as I do; but I did not make myself, and cannot help it. Oh! how often have I wished that you had been without a dollar and without a friend. How tenderly would I have cherished you! How light would the hardest labor have been, if it but produced flowers in your pathway! Let me make a confession. It is wrung from me almost in tears. But we may never meet again, and I would not have you misunderstand me, nor feel a doubt, when you think of me, overshadowing your mind. I loved my art with a passion that few can understand. But I was poor, and had to work in my profession for bread, when I longed to go only in pursuit of the beautiful, and to labor for the attainment of what was excellent in the profession I had chosen. How blessed would I have been with a competence! A few hundred a year would have filled the measure of my desires. Bread and water would have sufficed for my natural wants, could I have breathed under an Italian sky, and lived among the wonderful creations of those master-spirits who have made our art immortal. It was thus with me, when, in an evil hour, a friend suggested a marriage in which money should be the first consideration. I threw the suggestion aside with a feeling of indignation. He re-presented it, drawing at the same time a picture upon which I could not look without a quickening pulse. I in Italy, and a loving wife by my side, sketching and painting amid the perfect works of art that fill the galleries of every city in that beautiful land. I looked at the picture, and my heart stirred within me. Then you were mentioned; but I rejected the thought of any end in marriage lower than affection for the person, abstract from all other considerations. But every time I looked upon you after this came the dream of Italy; I saw myself there, and you by my side. It was in this soil that the seeds of affection were sown; here they took root, and here they grew. I could not help loving you; but I loved you not, at first, all for yourself. There was something beyond. You had the means by which I could attain to a desired end—but I never thought of attaining it as a consummation to be enjoyed alone; it was to be shared with you. In this blindness I sought your hand; in this blindness we were married, at a time when my income was scarcely sufficient to meet my own light expenses. I had, with a feeling that was little less than an insanity, depended for the future on the property you were said to possess. But, after marriage, how like the leaf of a sensitive plant from the approach of an intruder, did my whole nature shrink at the thought of touching your money, particularly as I had no means of my own. I saw my error when it was too late to retrace my steps. I felt that I had been mercenary, and that you would perceive it and despise me. Anxiously did I struggle in my profession for the means of independence; but I struggled in vain. Ah, Clara! words can give you no idea of the humiliation I experienced when necessity drove me to a confession of my poverty. If I could only erase that impression from my memory! When your brother so cruelly taunted me, I felt mad with a wild desire to show him, and every one else, that I had power to make your property the stepping-stone to great wealth. How sadly I failed in my purposes I will not repeat. You know all too well.

“Clara! Since our marriage, love for you has been a daily increasing passion. The more deeply I looked into your heart, the more I saw to inspire that respect upon which affection lays its broadest foundations. And now the parting with you seems as if it would rend me asunder. But it is necessary for our future happiness. You have enough left for the support of yourself and our sweet child. I will return when I am, as I should have been before our marriage, fully entitled to the blessing of a loving wife, because able to support her. Farewell, my dear, dear Clara! Do not grieve over my absence. Think of me hopefully—pray for me. I will return. Hide from other eyes the pain this step must occasion you. Conceal the apparent desertion for your own sake. Say that I have gone abroad to perfect myself in my art. I will come back, for without the light of your presence, I feel that all around me will lie in shadow. How soon, Heaven only knows! Farewell! farewell! I write the words tearfully. Farewell!

Your Husband.”

Mrs. Ellison was a woman of great self-control and decision of character. She loved her husband truly, notwithstanding his conduct since marriage had often been incomprehensible, and never so open and freely affectionate as she could have wished. All was now fully explained. She understood much that had been covered by doubt. Though the sudden disappearance of Alfred was a painful shock, yet, in the explanations he had given, her heart found relief, and she caught, as she looked along the future, glimpses of a happier prospect. Though the letter was wet with tears, as she finished reading it for the third time, and then hid it in her bosom, yet she was far from being hopeless and entirely wretched. She could comprehend, to some extent, the feelings of her husband, and was thus able to find an excuse for conduct at first sight so extraordinary. Thus, though smitten almost to the earth by the desertion and mystery of his absence, she could yet find many avenues to consolation. If he had only said where he was going, it would have been a great relief. But this he had chosen to conceal.

“Let me be patient and hopeful,” said she, pressing her hand upon her bosom, as if she would thus still the flutterings of her stricken heart. And then she lifted her eyes tearfully upward and prayed for guidance and strength—prayed also for the absent one who had made himself a wanderer on the earth.

The next great trial of Clara was to meet her friends and answer for the absence of her husband in such a way as to conceal the fact of his having gone away without confiding to her his destination. The utmost self-control on her part was necessary; and her answers had all to be in a certain sense evasive. All this was painful; for it was too evident that none felt satisfied, and that suspicions against her husband were created. Thus was the weight she had to bear increased. But she strung her heart to endurance; and said, in the silence of her grieving spirit, “I will be patient and hopeful.”

Months went by after the departure of Ellison, but no word from him came to his anxious, long-suffering, hopeful wife. The sweet bud he had left upon her bosom gradually opened in the warm sunshine; but its beauty and fragrance were but half enjoyed because he was not there to divide the pleasure. In spite of her efforts to hold fast by her confidence in his return, the heart of Clara grew weaker every day. Nightly were her dreams full of her husband; but in visions she only saw him sick or in danger, and she often awoke in terror. The color left her cheeks; her face grew thin and overcast with anxiety. Still the months went by, but no intelligence from the absent one came; no ray of light pierced the thick clouds of uncertainty that veiled her sky.

——