Long Branch is electrified next day by the sudden departure of the Carlyles for New York.

Surprise and wonder run high, and the curious ones seek Felise, thinking that she, if any one, must be acquainted with the whys and wherefores.

But Felise is rather reticent on the subject.

"I will tell you all I know," she says, with a pretty affectation of frankness. "That is not much. The Carlyles are going abroad next week and the colonel is going to put his wife at a convent school in Paris to finish her education and perfect herself in music. He told me that much this morning, and I did not ask him why he proposed taking such a singular step."

"You thought him so crazed by jealousy that he could hardly account for his whims in a rational manner, eh?" inquired one.

"It is monstrous!" says another. "Why, the girl was as finished and elegant in her manners as mortal could be. It were impossible to add another charm to her."

While Byron Penn quoted with enthusiasm:

[Pg 78]
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To smooth the ice; or add another hue Unto the rainbow; or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish, Were wasteful and ridiculous excess."

It was a nine days' wonder, and then it was over. People voted Colonel Carlyle a bear and a Bluebeard, and his lovely young bride a victim and martyr. They said that he was secluding her from the world because he was too jealous for the light of Heaven to shine upon her.

The young poet indited some charming verses for his favorite magazine: "To Those Blue Eyes Across the Sea," and then the gossip began to die out, and new subjects engrossed society's mind.

Months rolled on, and the Carlyle eclaircissement was almost forgotten, or at least but seldom named, even by those who had been the most interested at first.

But Felise was jubilant.

"Mother, you see what I can do," she said, with a wicked laugh. "The honeymoon is barely over, yet I have thrown sand in the old man's eyes and parted him from his darling for two whole years."

"Felise, how did you accomplish it?" Mrs. Arnold inquired curiously.

"That is my secret," she answered, triumphantly.

"You might share it with me," her mother said, reproachfully. "I never have secrets from you, my dear."

"I only used a little tact and humbug, mother—just a word dropped in season here and there—yet the seed I sowed has brought forth an abundant harvest. I have driven him nearly mad with jealousy and doubt and suspicion; I put that scheme of sending Bonnibel to school into his mind. And yet so blinded is he by his jealousy that he does not dream of my complicity in the matter, and he will always blame himself for the everlasting alienation that will exist between them."

"You had your revenge sooner than I thought you would. You are a clever girl, Felise," Mrs. Arnold said, admiringly.

"It is but begun," Felise answered, moodily. "If time spares the old man until Bonnibel comes out of her school I will wring his heart even more deeply than I have already done. I bide my time."

Her mother, cruel and vindictive as she was herself, looked at her in wonder.

"Why, it seems to me that you have already deeply avenged yourself," she said.

"Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!" Felise exclaimed, repeating her favorite text. "Be patient, mother, and you shall yet see what a woman scorned can do."

"What does Colonel Ca............