the
last bar at the mother who killed him! Do you wonder I am afraid to
die? I don't deny my bloody deeds--but after all it was a foul wrong
that drove me to desperation; and God knows, man's injustice brought me
to my sin. I was a spoiled, motherless child, married at sixteen to a
man whose family despised me, because my pretty face had ruined their
scheme of a match with an heiress, whose money was needed to retrieve
their fortunes. They never forgave the marriage, and after a few years,
mischief began to brew.

"I loved my husband, but his nature was too austere to deal patiently
with my freakish, petulant, volcanic temper; and when he lectured me
for my frivolity, obstinacy plunged me into excesses of gayety, that at
heart I did not enjoy. His mother and sister shunned me more and more,
poisoned his mind with wicked and unfounded suspicions, and so we grew
mutually distrustful. He tired of me, and he showed it. I loved him.
Oh! I loved him better, and better, as I saw him drifting away. He
neglected me, spent his leisure where he met the woman he had once
intended to marry. I was so maddened with jealous heart-ache, some evil
spirit prompted me to try and punish him with the same pangs. That was
my first sin of deception; I pretended an attachment I never felt,
hoping to rekindle my husband's affection. Like many another heart-sick
wife, I was caught in my own snare; and while I was as innocent of any
wrong as my own baby boy, his father was glad of a pretext to excuse
his alienation. People slandered me; and because I loved Allen so
deeply, I was too proud to defend myself, until too late.

"God is my witness, my husband was the only man I ever loved; ah! how
dear he was to me! His very garments were precious; and I have kissed
and cried over his gloves, his slippers. The touch of his hand was
worth all the world to me, but he withheld it. When you know your
husband loves you, he may ill treat, may trample you under his feet,
but you can forgive him all; you caress the heel that bruises you.
Allen ceased to show me ordinary consideration, stung me with sneers,
threatened separation; even shrunk from the boy, because he was mine.

"There came a day, when some fiend forged a letter, and the same vile
hand laid it in my husband's desk. Only God knows whose is the guilt of
that black deed, but I believe it was his sister's work. Allen cursed
me as unworthy to be the mother of his child, and swore he would be
free. O