After the Storm

_NO_ June day ever opened with a fairer promise. Not a single cloud flecked the sky, and the sun coursed onward through the azure sea until past meridian, without throwing to th...

_IRENE DELANCY_ was a girl of quick, strong feelings, and an undisciplined will. Her mother died before she reached her tenth year. From that time she was either at home under t...

_IN_ alternate storm and sunshine their lives passed on, until the appointed day arrived that was to see them bound, not by the graceful true-lovers' knot, which either might un...

_THE_ wedding party was to spend a week at Saratoga, and it was now the third day since its arrival. The time had passed pleasantly, or wearily, according to the state of mind o...

_MR. DELANCY_ was sitting in his library on the afternoon of the fourth day since the wedding-party left Ivy Cliff, when the entrance of some one caused him to turn toward the d...

_AFTER_ the storm. Alas! that there should be a wreck-strewn shore so soon! That within three days of the bridal morning a tempest should have raged, scattering on the wind swee...

Twilight was falling when Irene came down from her room and joined her father in the library. Mr. Delancy looked into her face narrowly as she entered. The dim light of the clos...

_WE_ will not speak of the cause that led to this serious rupture between Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. It was light as vanity--an airy nothing in itself--a spark that would have gone o...

_FOR_ such a reception the young wife was wholly unprepared. Suddenly her husband had put on a new character and assumed a right of control against which her sensitive pride and...

_AFTER_ the storm. And they were reconciled. The clouds rolled back; the sun came out again with his radiant smiles and genial warmth. But was nothing broken? nothing lost? Did...

_BOTH_ Emerson and his wife came up from this experience changed in themselves and toward each other. A few days had matured them beyond what might have been looked for in as ma...

_SENTIMENTS_ like these, coming to Irene as they did while she was yet chafing under a recent collision with her husband, and while the question of submission was yet an open on...

_SOCIAL_ theories that favor our passions, peculiarities, defects of character or weaknesses are readily adopted, and, with minds of an ardent temper, often become hobbies. Ther...

_MRS. EMERSON_ did not feel altogether comfortable in mind as she rode away from her door alone. She was going unattended by her husband, and against his warmly-spoken remonstra...

_BUT_ it is not so easily escaping from a woman like Mrs. Talbot, when an acquaintanceship is once formed. In less than a week she called again, and this time in company with an...

_TIME_ moved on, and Mrs. Emerson's intimate city friends were those to whom she had been introduced, directly or indirectly, through Mrs. Talbot. Of these, the one who had most...

_ONE_ evening--it was nearly three years from the date of their marriage--Hartley Emerson and his wife were sitting opposite to each other at the centre-table, in the evening. S...

_THE_ night had passed wearily for Mr. Delancy, broken by fitful dreams, in which the image of his daughter was always present--dreams that he could trace to no thoughts or impr...

"You must win her heart back again, Rose," said Mr. Delancy. "I will lure her to Ivy Cliff often this summer, and keep her here as long as possible each time. You will then be m...

_THE_ shock to Mr. Delancy was a fearful one, coming as it did on a troubled, foreboding state of mind; and reason lost for a little while her firm grasp on the rein of governme...

_IT_ is two years since the day of separation between Irene and her husband. Just two years. And she is sitting in the portico at Ivy Cliff with her father, looking down upon th...

_YES_, Irene had looked for this--looked for it daily for now more than a year. Still it came upon her with a shock that sent a strange, wild shudder through all her being. A di...

_GRADUALLY_ the mind of Irene attained clearness of perception as to duty, and a firmness of will that led her to act in obedience to what reason and religion taught her was rig...

_A CLATTER_ of machinery, a rush of waters, and the boat glanced onward but still Hartley Emerson stood motionless and statue-like, his eyes fixed upon the shore, until the swif...

"Only forty." And a faint sigh breathed on the lips of Irene. She did not look around at her friend but sat very still, with her face turned partly away. Mrs. Everet looked at h...

_THE_ brief meeting with Mrs. Everet had stirred the memory of old times in the heart of Mr. Emerson. With a vividness unknown for years, Ivy Cliff and the sweetness of many lif...

_IT_ was more than a week before Mr. Emerson called again upon the lady friend who had shown so strong a desire to procure him a wife. He expected her to introduce the name of M...

_AFTER_ the storm! How long the treasure remained buried in deep waters! How long the earth showed unsightly furrows and barren places! For nearly twenty years there had been wa...