“Que suis je? — qu’ai je fait? Que dois-je faire encore?

Quel transport me saisit? Quel chagrin me dévore?”

Some hours after the quarrel about the straws, when her husband had entirely forgotten it, and was sitting very quietly in his own apartment writing a letter, Griselda entered the room with a countenance prepared for great exploits.

“Mr. Bolingbroke,” she began in an awful tone of voice, “if you are at leisure to attend to me, I wish to speak to you upon a subject of some importance.”

“I am quite at leisure, my dear; pray sit down: what is the matter? you really alarm me!”

“It is not my intention to alarm you, Mr. Bolingbroke,” continued she in a still more solemn tone; “the time is past when what I have to say could have alarmed: I am persuaded that you will now hear it without emotion, or with an emotion of pleasure.”

She paused; he laid down his pen, and looked all expectation.

“I am come to announce to you a fixed, unalterable resolution — To part from you, Mr. Bolingbroke.”

“Are you serious, my dear?”

“Perfectly serious, sir.”

These words did not produce the revolution in her husband’s countenance which Griselda had expected. She trembled with a mixed indescribable emotion of grief and rage when she heard him calmly reply, “Let us part, then, Griselda, if that be your wish; but let me be sure that it is your wish: I must have it repeated from your lips when you are perfectly calm.”

With a voice inarticulate from passion, Griselda began to assure him that she was perfectly calm; but he stopped her, and mildly said, “Take four-and-twenty hours to consider of what you are about, Griselda; I will be here at this time to-morrow to learn your final determination.”

Mr. Bolingbroke left the room.

Mrs. Bolingbroke was incapable of thinking: she could only feel. Conflicting passions assailed her heart. All the woman rushed upon her soul; she loved her husband more at this instant than she had ever loved him before. His firmness excited at once her anger and her admiration. She could not believe that she had heard his words rightly. She sat down to recall minutely every circumstance of what had just passed, every word, every look; she finished by persuading herself, that his calmness was affected, that the best method she could possibly take was by a show of resistance to bully him out of his indifference. She little knew what she hazarded; when the danger of losing her husband’s love was imaginary, and solely of her own creating, it affected her in the most violent manner; but now that the peril was real and imminent, she was insensible to its existence.

A celebrated traveller in the Alps advises people to imagine themselves walking amidst precipices, when t............