He was leaning towards her, and listening with rapt interest, his countenance and eyes full of admiration, when a quick, impatient _ahem_ caused him to look up. As he did so, he encountered the severe face and piercing eyes of Mr. Dexter. The sudden change in the expression of his countenance warned Mrs. Dexter of the presence of her husband, who had approached quietly, and was standing a pace or two behind his wife. But not the slightest consciousness of this presence did her manner exhibit. She kept on talking as before, and talking to Mr. Hendrickson.

"Will you go with me now, Mrs. Dexter?" said her husband, coming forward, and making a motion as if about to offer his arm.

"Not yet if you please, Mr. Dexter," was smilingly answered. "I am too much interested in this good company. Come, sit down here," and she made room for him on the sofa.

But he stood still.

"Then amuse yourself a little longer," said his wife, in a gay voice. "I will be ready to go with you after a while."

Mr. Dexter moved away, disappointed, and commenced pacing the floor of the long parlor. At every turn his keen eyes took in the aspect of the little group, and particularly the meaning of his wife's face, as it turned to Mr. Hendrickson, either in the play of expression or warm with the listener's interest. The sight half maddened him. Three times, in the next half hour, he said to his wife, as he paused in his restless promenade before her--

"Come, Jessie."

But she only threw him a smiling negative, and became still more interesting to her friends. At last, and of her own will, she arose, and bowing, with a face all smiles and eyes dancing in light, to Mr.

Hendrickson and Mrs. Florence, she stepped forward, and placing her hand on the arm of her husband, went like a sunbeam from the room.

CHAPTER XV.

"MADAM!"

They had reached their own apartments, and Mrs. Dexter was moving forward past her husband. The stern imperative utterance caused her to pause and turn round.

"We leave for home in the morning!" said Mr. Dexter.

"_We_?" His wife looked at him fixedly as she made the simple interrogation.

"Yes, _we_!" was answered, and in the voice of one who had made up his mind, and did not mean to be thwarted in his purpose.

"Mr. Dexter!" his wife stood very erect before him; her eyes did not quail beneath his angry glances; nor was there any sign of weakness in her low, even tones. "Let me warn you now--and regard the warning as for all time--against any attempt to coerce me into obedience to your arbitrary exactions. Your conduct to-night was simply disgraceful--humiliating to yourself, and mortifying and unjust to your wife. Let us have no more of this. There is a high wall between us, Mr. Dexter--high as heaven and deep as--." Her feelings were getting the rein and she checked herself. "Your own hands have built it," she resumed in a colder tone, "but your own hands, I fear, have not the strength to pull it down. Love you I never did, and you knew it from the beginning; love you I never can. That is a simple impossibility. But true to you as steel to the magnet in all the externals of my life, I have been and shall continue to be, even to the end of this unhappy union. As a virtuous woman, I could be nothing less. The outrage I have suffered this day from your hands, is irreparable. I never imagined it would come to this. I did not dream that it was in you to charge upon your wife the meditation of a crime the deepest it is possible for a woman to commit. That you were weakly jealous, I saw; and I came here in cheerful acquiescence to your whim, in order to help you to get right. But this very act of cheerful acquiescence was made the ground of a charge that shocked my being to the inmost and changed me towards you irrevocably."

The stern angry aspect of Mr. Dexter was all gone. It seemed as if emotion had suddenly exhausted itself.

"We had better go home to-morrow." He spoke in a subdued voice.

"Neither of us can find enjoyment here."

"I shall not be ready to morrow, nor the next day either," was the out-spoken reply. "To go thus hurriedly, after your humiliating exhibition of distrust, would only be to give free rein to the tongue of scandal; and that I wish to avoid."

"It has free rein already," said Mr. Dexter. "At Saratoga I heard your name lightly spoken and brought you away for that very reason.

You are not chary enough of yourself in these public places. I know men better than you do."

"If a light word was spoken of me, sir, at Saratoga or anywhere else, you alone are to blame. My conduct has warranted no such freedom of speech. But I can easily imagine how men will think lightly of a woman when her husband shows watchfulness and suspicion. It half maddens me, sir, to have this disgrace put upon me. To-morrow week I will go home if you then desire it--not a day earlier. And I warn you against any more such exhibitions as we have had to-night. If you cannot take pleasure in society that is congenial to my taste, leave me to my enjoyment, but don't mar it with your cloudy presence. And set this down as a truism--the wife that must be watched, is not worth having."

For utterances like these, Mr. Dexter was not prepared. They stunned and weakened him. He felt that he had a spirit to deal with that might easily be driven to desperation. A man, if resolute, he had believed might control the actions of almost any woman--that woman being his wife. And he had never doubted the result of marital authority, should he at any time deem it necessary to lay upon Mrs.

Dexter an iron hand. The occasion, as he believed, had arrived; the hand was put forth; the will was resolute; but his vice-like grip closed upon the empty air! The spirit with which he had to deal was of subtler essence and more vigorous life than he had imagined.

How suddenly were Mrs. Dexter's wifely, unselfish and self-denying purposes in regard to her husband scattered upon the winds! She had come to Newport, resolved to be all to him that it was possible for her to be--even to the withdrawing of herself more from social circles in which attractive men formed a part. The admonitions of Mrs. De Lisle sunk deeply into her heart. She saw her relation to her husband in a new aspect. He had larger claims upon her than she had admitted heretofore. If she had been partly coerced into the compact, he had been deceived by her promises at the altar into expecting more than it was in her power to give. She owed him not only a wife's allegiance, but a wife's tender consideration.

Alas! how suddenly had all these good purposes been withered up, like tender flowers in the biting frost! And now there was strife between them--bitterness, anger, scorn, alienation. The uneasiness which her husband had manifested for some months previously, whenever she was in free, animated conversation with gentlemen, annoyed her slightly; but she had never regarded it as a very serious affection on his part, and, conscious of her own purity, believed that he would ere long see the evidence thereof, and cease to give himself useless trouble. His conduct at Saratoga, followed by the conversations with Mrs. De Lisle and Mrs. Anthony, aroused her to a truer sense of his actual state of mind. His singular, stealthy scanning of her countenance, immediately after their arrival at Newport, following, as she rightly concluded, his unexpected meeting with Hendrickson, considerably disturbed the balance of mind she had sought to gain, and this dimmed her clear perceptions of duty. His direct reference to Mr. Hendrickson, after her hurried meeting with him, filled her with indignation, and simply prepared the way for this last defiant position. She felt deeply outraged, and wholly estranged.

Icy reserve and distant formality now marked the intercourse of Mr.

and Mrs. Dexter. It was all in vain that he sought to win back that semblance of affection which he had lost. Mrs. Dexter was too sincere a woman--too earnest and true--for broad disguises. She could be courteous, regardful, attentive to all the needs of her husband; but she could not pretend to love, when daily her heart experienced new occasions of dislike.

On the next morning, Mrs. Dexter, on going into one of the parlors, met Mr. Hendrickson. From his manner, it was evident that he had been waiting there in hopes to gain an interview. Mrs. Dexter felt displeased. She was a lawful wife, and it struck her as an implication on his part of possible dishonor on hers. He came forward to meet her as she entered the room, with a pleased smile on his face, but she gave his warm greeting but a cold return. An instant change in his manner, showed the effect upon his feelings.

"I shall leave to-day," he said.

"So soon? I thought you purposed remaining for several days."

"So I did. But I have a letter this morning from the brother of Miss Arden, of whom I spoke last evening. He leaves her at Albany to-day, and asks me to join her to-morrow. They were on their way to Niagara; but unexpected business--he is a lawyer--requires him to return home; and I am to be the young lady's escort. So they have arranged the matter, and I cannot decline, of course."

"Why should you?" Mrs. Dexter schooled her voice. Its natural expression, at that time, might have betrayed a state of feeling that it would have been treason to exhibit.

"True. Why should I? The lady is charming. I was going to say that she has not her peer."

"Why not say it?" remarked Mrs. Dexter.

"Because," replied Mr. Hendrickson, as his eyes withdrew themselves from the face of Mrs. Dexter, "I do not believe it. She has her peer."

"She must be a lovely woman so to captivate your fancy," said Mrs.

Dexter.

"Did I say that she had captivated my fancy?" asked Hendrickson.

"If not in so many formally spoken words, yet in a language that we ladies can read at a glance," replied Mrs. Dexter, affecting a gay smile. "Well," she added, "as you are to be so largely the gainer by this sudden withdrawal from Newport, we quiet people, who cannot but miss your pleasant company, have nothing left but acquiescence. I hope to make Miss Arden's acquaintance on our return to B--."

The voice of Mrs. Dexter had a faint huskiness and there were signs of depression which she was not able to conceal. These the watchful eyes of Mr. Hendrickson detected. But so far from taking any advantage thereof, he made an effort to divert both her mind and his own by the introduction of a more indifferent subject. They conversed for half an hour longer, but no further reference was made to Miss Arden. Then Mr. Hendrickson excused himself. Mrs. Dexter did not see him again.

He left for Boston soon after, on his way to join Miss Arden at Albany.

From the parlor Mrs. Dexter returned to her own rooms, and did not leave them during the day. She had felt feverish on rising, and was conscious of a pressure on the brain, accompanied by a feeling of la.s.situde that was unusual. This condition of the system increased, as the day wore on. At dinner-time, her husband urged her to go with him to the table; but she had a loathing for food, and declined. He ordered a servant to take tea, with toast and some delicacies, to her room; but when he came up again, he found them untasted.

"Was this a disease of mind or body?" Mr. Dexter asked himself the question, and studied over the solution. Notwithstanding the disturbed interview with his wife on the previous evening, he had kept his eyes on her, and noticed her meeting with Hendrickson in the parlor. Her warning, however, had proved effectual in preventing his intrusion upon them. He saw Hendrickson leave her, and noticed that she sat in deep abstraction for some time afterwards, and that when she arose, and went up to her own apartments, her face wore an expression that was unusual. Much to his surprise, he saw Hendrickson leave soon after for Boston. On examining the register, he learned that his destination was Albany.

A momentary relief was experienced at this departure; but soon mystery was suggested, and a mutual understanding between his wife and Hendrickson imagined. And so fuel was heaped on the fires of jealousy, which blazed up again as fiercely as ever. The seclusion of herself in her own room by Mrs. Dexter, following as it did immediately on the departure of Hendrickson, confirmed him in the impression that she was deeply interested in her old lover. How else could he interpret her conduct? If she were really sick, conflict of feeling, occasioned by his presence, was the cause. That to his mind was clear. And he was not so far wrong; for, in part, here lay the origin of her disturbed condition of mind and body. Still, his conclusions went far beyond the truth.

Mrs. Dexter was lying on the bed when her husband came up from dinner. She did not stir on his entrance. Her face was turned away, and partly hidden by the fringe of a pillow.

"You must eat something," he said, speaking kindly. But she neither moved nor replied.

"Jessie." No motion or response.

"Jessie!" Mr. Dexter stood a few feet from the bed, looking at her.

"She may be sleeping," he thought, and stepping forward, he bent down and laid his fingers lightly on her cheek. It was unnaturally hot. "Jessie"--he uttered her name again--"are you asleep?"