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 has taken leave of his wits; he wishes to put away his wife."

"To put her away?"

"To repudiate her, as the historians say!"

"To repudiate little Blanche!" murmured Mrs. Vivian, as if she were struck with the incongruity of the operation.

"I mean to keep them together," said Angela, with a fine decision.

Her mother looked at her with admiration.

"My dear daughter, I will assist you."

The two ladies had such an air of mysterious competence to the task they had undertaken that it seemed to Bernard that nothing was left to him but to retire into temporary exile. He accordingly betook himself to London, where he had social resources which would, perhaps, make exile endurable. He found himself, however, little disposed to avail himself of these resources, and he treated himself to no pleasures but those of memory and expectation. He ached with a sense of his absence from Mrs. Vivian's deeply familiar sky-parlour, which seemed to him for the time the most sacred spot on earth—if on earth it could be called—and he consigned to those generous postal receptacles, which ornament with their brilliant hue the London street corners, an inordinate number of the most voluminous epistles that had ever been dropped into them. He took long walks alone, and thought all the way of Angela, to whom it seemed to him that the character of ministering angel was extremely becoming. She was faithful to her promise of writing to him every day, and she was an angel who wielded (so at least Bernard thought, and he was particular about letters) a very ingenious pen. Of course she had only one topic—the success of her operations with regard to Gordon. "Mamma has undertaken Blanche," she wrote, "and I am devoting myself to 255