IRENE." Two or three times Emerson read the line--"I leave for Ivy Cliff to-day"-- and looked at the signature, before its meaning came fully into his thought.
"Gone to Ivy Cliff!" he said, at last, in a low, hoarse voice.
"Gone, and without a word of intimation or explanation! Gone, and in the heat of anger! Has it come to this, and so soon! God help us!" And the unhappy man sunk into a chair, heart-stricken and weak as a child.
For nearly the whole of the night that followed he walked the floor of his room, and the next day found him in a feverish condition of both mind and body.

Not once did the thought of following his wife to Ivy Cliff, if it came into his mind, rest there for a moment.

She had gone home to her father with only an announcement of the fact.
He would wait some intimation of her further purpose; but, if they met again, she must come back to him.

This was his first, spontaneous conclusion; and it was not questioned in his thought, nor did he waver from it an instant.

She must come back of her own free will, if she came back at all.
It was on the twentieth day of December that Irene left New York.
Not until the twenty-second could a letter from her reach Hartley, if, on reflection or after conference with her father, she desired to make a communication.