haunted me.

I shut out the keen air and wintry sky, at length, and silently ascended
to the diverted rooms above. But in the soft gloom of a vestibule my
steps were stayed. Two figures, in a flowery alcove, fixed my eye. The
light streamed full upon them, and the fragrant stillness of the air was
hardly stirred by their low tones.

Effie was there, sunk on a low couch, her face bowed upon her hands; and
at her side, speaking with impassioned voice and ardent eyes, leaned
Alfred Vaughan.

The sight struck me like a blow, and the sharp anguish of that moment
proved how deeply I had learned to love.

"Effie, it is a sinful tie that binds you to that man; he does not love
you, and it should be broken,--for this slavery will wear away the life
now grown so dear to me."

The words, hot with indignant passion, smote me like a wintry blast, but
not so coldly as the broken voice that answered them:--

"He said death alone must part us two, and, remembering that, I cannot
listen to another love."

Like a guilty ghost I stole away, and in the darkness of my solitary
room struggled with my bitter grief, my newborn love. I never blamed
my wife,--that wife who had heard the tender name so seldom, she could
scarce feel it hers. I had fettered her free heart, forgetting it would
one day cease to be a child's. I bade her look upon me as a father; she