arms and attempted to draw them from his neck. She perceived this,
and clung to him more eagerly.

"Dear Hartley!" she said, "will you not speak to me ?"

"Irene!" His voice was cold and deep, and as he pronounced her name
he withdrew himself from her embrace. At this she grew calm and
stepped a pace back from him.

"Irene, we are not children," he said, in the same cold, deep voice,
the tones of which were even and measured. "That time is past. Nor
foolish young lovers, who fall out and make up again twice or thrice
in a fortnight; but man and wife, with the world and its sober
realities before us."

"Oh, Hartley," exclaimed Irene, as he paused; "don't talk to me in
this way! Don't look at me so! It will kill me. I have done wrong. I
have acted like foolish child. But I am penitent. It was half in
sport that I went away, and I was so sure of seeing you at Ivy Cliff
yesterday that I told father you were coming."

"Irene, sit down." And Emerson took the hand of his wife and led her
to a sofa. Then, after closing the parlor door, he drew a chair and
seated himself directly in front of her. There was a coldness and
self-possession about him, that chilled Irene.

"It is a serious thing," he said, looking steadily in her face, "for
a wife to leave, in anger, her husband's house for that of her
father."