Ann Holland opened the door so carefully that the latch did not click or
the hinges creak; and, shading the light with her hand, she stood beside
him for a minute or two, as he looked down upon his sleeping wife. She
did not dare to lift her eyes to his face; but she knew that all the
light and glow of gladness had fled from it, and a gray look of terror
had crept across it. He was a very different man from the one who had
been seated on her hearth a short half-hour ago. He bade her leave him
alone, and without a light, and she obeyed him, though reluctantly, and
with an undefined fear of him in his wretchedness.
It seemed to Mr. Chantrey as if an age had passed over him. As persons
who are drowning see in one brief moment all the course of their past
lives, with its most trivial circumstances, so he seemed to have looked
into his own future, stretching before him in gloom and darkness, and
foreseen a thousand miserable results springing from this fatal source.
She was his wife, dearer to him than any other object in the world; but
after she had repented and reformed, as surely she would repent and
reform, she could never be to him again what she had been.
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