Not five minutes were needed to decide on the new departure.  Esther and Catherine found relief and amusement in the bustle of preparation.  If Esther was still a little feverish and excited, she was able to throw it off in work.  She was no longer an object of pity; it was her uncle and aunt who deserved deepest compassion.  What worse shock was possible for an elderly, middle-aged New York lawyer than to return to his house at six o’clock and find that he is to have barely time for his dinner and cigar before being thrust out into the cold and hideous darkness of a February night, in order to travel some four hundred miles through a snow-bound country?  It is true that he had received some little warning to arrange his affairs for an absence over Saturday, but at best the blow was a severe one, and he bore it with a silent fortitude which wrung his wife’s heart.  She was a masterful mistress, but she was good to those who obeyed, and she even showed the weakness of begging him not to go, although in her soul she knew that he must.

“After all, John, you needn’t go with us.  I can take the girls alone.”

“As I understand it, you have engaged my professional services,” he replied.  “On the whole I prefer prevention to cure.  I would rather help Esther to run away, than get her a divorce.”

“When I am dead, you shall stay quietly at home and be perfectly happy,” she answered, with the venerable device which wives, from earliest history, have used to palliate their own sins.

Nevertheless he felt almost as miserable as his wife, when, wrapped in cloaks and rugs, they left their bright dining room and shuffled down the steps into the outside darkness to their carriage.  He expressed opinions about lovers which would have put a quick end to the human race had they been laws of nature.  He wished the church would take them all and consign them to its own favorite place of punishment.  He had a disagreeable trick of gibing at his wife’s orthodoxy on this point, and when she remonstrated at his profanity, he smiled contentedly and said:  “There is nothing profane about it.  It is sound church doctrine, and I envy you for being able to believe it.  You can hope to see them with your own eyes getting their reward, confound them!”

Consoling himself with this pleasing hope, they started off, and in five minutes were at Esther’s door.  After taking the two girls into the carriage, Mr. Murray became more affable and even gay.  By the time the party was established in their sleeping car, he had begun to enjoy himself.  He had too often made such journeys, and was too familiar with every thing on the road to be long out of humor, and for once it was amusing to have a pair of pretty girls to take with him.  Commonly his best society was some member of the Albany Legislature, and his only conversation was about city charters and railroad legislation.  The variety had its charm.  Esther was as good as her word.  She made a desperate battle to recover