forbearing, for I passed months of torment. I saw that affection, which
was my all, gliding gradually away from me; and the tortured will cry
out. I am not an ungoverned woman, but sometimes the agony was
intolerable, and I complained. Well, that agony, I long for it back; for
now I am desolate."

"Poor soul! How could a man have the heart to leave you? how could he
have the face?"

"Oh, he did not do it shamelessly. He left me for a week, to visit
friends in England. But he wrote to me from London. He had left me at
Berlin. He said that he did not like to tell me before parting, but I
must not expect to see him for six weeks; and he desired me to go to my
mother in Denmark. He would send his next letter to me there. Ah! he knew
I should need my mother when his second letter came. He had planned it
all, that the blow might not kill me. He wrote to tell me he was a ruined
man, and he was too proud to let me support him: he begged my pardon for
his love, for his desertion, for ever having crossed my brilliant path
like a dark cloud. He praised me, he thanked me, he blessed me; but he
left me. It was a beautiful letter, but it was the death-warrant of my
heart. I was abandoned."

Ashmead started up and walked very briskly, with a great appearance of
business requiring vast dispatch, to the other end of the _salle;_ and
there, being out of Ina's hearing, he spoke his mind to a candlestick
with three branches. "D--n him! Heartless, sentimental scoundrel! D--n
him! D--n him!"

Having relieved his mind with this pious ejaculation, he returned to Ina
at a reasonable pace and much relieved, and was now enabled to say,