CHAPTER XXI.
THE IRREVOCABLE DECREE.
_IT_ is two years since the day of separation between Irene and her husband.

Just two years.

And she is sitting in the portico at Ivy Cliff with her father, looking down upon the river that lies gleaming in sunshine--not thinking of the river, however, nor of anything in nature.
They are silent and still--very still, as if sleep had locked their senses.

He is thin and wasted as from long sickness, and she looks older by ten years.

There is no fine bloom on her cheeks, from which the fullness of youth has departed.
It is a warm June day, the softest, balmiest, brightest day the year has given.