can. That is a simple
impossibility. But true to you as steel to the magnet in all the
externals of my life, I have been and shall continue to be, even to
the end of this unhappy union. As a virtuous woman, I could be
nothing less. The outrage I have suffered this day from your hands,
is irreparable. I never imagined it would come to this. I did not
dream that it was in you to charge upon your wife the meditation of
a crime the deepest it is possible for a woman to commit. That you
were weakly jealous, I saw; and I came here in cheerful acquiescence
to your whim, in order to help you to get right. But this very act
of cheerful acquiescence was made the ground of a charge that
shocked my being to the inmost and changed me towards you
irrevocably."

The stern angry aspect of Mr. Dexter was all gone. It seemed as if
emotion had suddenly exhausted itself.

"We had better go home to-morrow." He spoke in a subdued voice.
"Neither of us can find enjoyment here."

"I shall not be ready to morrow, nor the next day either," was the
out-spoken reply. "To go thus hurriedly, after your humiliating
exhibition of distrust, would only be to give free rein to the
tongue of scandal; and that I wish to avoid."

"It has free rein already," said Mr. Dexter. "At Saratoga I heard
your name lightly spoken and brought you away for that very reason.
You are not chary enough of yourself in these public places. I know
men better than you do."

"If a light word was spoken of me, sir, at Saratoga or anywhere
else, you alone are to blame. My conduct has warranted no such
freedom of speech. But I can easily imagine how men will think
lightly of a woman when her husband shows watchfulness and
suspicion. It half maddens me, sir, to have this disgrace put upon
me. To-morrow week I will go home if you then desire it--not a day
earlier. And I warn you against any more such exhibitions as we have
had to-night. If you cannot take pleasure in society that is
congenial to my taste, leave me to my enjoyment, but don't mar it
with your cloudy presence. And set this down as a truism--the wife
that must be watched, is not worth having."

For utterances like these, Mr. Dexter was not prepared. They stunned
and weakened him. He felt that he had a spirit to deal with that
might easily be driven to desperation. A man, if resolute, he had
believed might control the actions of almost any woman--that woman
being his wife. And he had never doubted the result of