CLARENCE


By Bret Harte




PART I.




CHAPTER I.



As Clarence Brant, President of the Robles Land Company, and husband of
the rich widow of John Peyton, of the Robles Ranche, mingled with the
outgoing audience of the Cosmopolitan Theatre, at San Francisco, he
elicited the usual smiling nods and recognition due to his good
looks and good fortune. But as he hurriedly slipped through the still
lingering winter's rain into the smart coupe that was awaiting him, and
gave the order "Home," the word struck him with a peculiarly ironical
significance. His home was a handsome one, and lacked nothing in
appointment and comfort, but he had gone to the theatre to evade its
hollow loneliness. Nor was it because his wife was not there, for he had
a miserable consciousness that her temporary absence had nothing to do
with his homelessness. The distraction of the theatre over, that dull,
vague, but aching sense of loneliness which was daily growing upon him