There seemed to be an ominous knell of finality in it, and, mingling with it, a sinister jeer at his supreme folly in thus turning his back forever upon this attractive, though comparatively simple, home, with its atmosphere of purity and sweet, refining influences; in discarding the beautiful and loyal woman whom he had once believed he adored; in abandoning and forfeiting the affection and respect of a lovely daughter, who also gave promise of becoming, in the near future, a brilliant and cultured woman, and—for what?
More than an hour elapsed after Dorothy fled from her father's presence before she could control herself sufficiently to seek her mother, who also had been fighting a mighty battle in the solitude of her own room. Even then the girl's eyes were red and swollen from excessive weeping; neither had she been able to overcome wholly the grief-laden sobs which, for the time, had utterly prostrated her.
"Mamma, he has told me, and—he has gone," she faltered, almost on the verge of breaking down again, as she threw herself upon her knees by her mother's side and searched with anxious eyes the white, set face of the deserted wife.
"Yes, dear; I heard him go."
"Do you think it will be forever?"
"That is what a divorce—a legal separation—means, Dorothy."
The girl dropped her head upon her mother's shoulder, with a moan of pain, and Helen slipped a compassionate arm around the trembling form.
"Mamma," Dorothy began again, after a few moments of silence.
"Well, dear?"
"I think it is awful—what he is doing; but don't you think that we—you and I—can be happy again, by and by, just by ourselves?"