would insist--no, he is too fond of me to do that--he would
entreat me to take the name which he has assumed. Mrs. Midwinter.
Hideous! Ozias, too, when I wanted to address him familiarly, as his
wife should. Worse than hideous!

"And yet there would be some reason for humoring him in this if he asked
me.

"Suppose the brute at the great house happened to leave this
neighborhood as a single man; and suppose, in his absence, any of the
people who know him heard of a Mrs. Allan Armadale, they would set her
down at once as his wife. Even if they actually saw me--if I actually
came among them with that name, and if he was not present to contradict
it--his own servants would be the first to say, 'We knew she would marry
him, after all!' And my lady-patronesses, who will be ready to believe
anything of me now we have quarreled, would join the chorus _sotto
voce:_ 'Only think, my dear, the report that so shocked us actually
turns out to be true!' No. If I marry Midwinter, I must either be
perpetually putting my husband and myself in a false position--or I must
leave his real name, his pretty, romantic name, behind me at the church
door.

"My husband! As if I was really going to marry him! I am _not_ going to
marry him, and there's an end of it.

"Half-past ten.--Oh, dear! oh, dear! how my temples throb, and how hot
my weary eyes feel! There is the moon looking at me through the window.
How fast the little scattered clouds are flying before the wind! Now
they let the moon in; and now they shut the moon out. What strange
shapes the patches of yellow light take, and lose again, all in a
moment! No peace and quiet for me, look where I may. The candle keeps
flickering, and the very sky itself is restless to-night.

"'To bed! to bed!' as Lady Macbeth says. I wonder, by-the-by, what Lady
Macbeth would have done in my position? She would have killed somebody
when her difficulties first began. Probably Armadale.

"Friday morning.--A night's rest, thanks again to my Drops. I went to
breakfast in better spirits, and received a morning welcome in the shape
of a letter from Mrs. Oldershaw.

"My silence has produced its effect on Mother Jezebel. She attributes
it to the right cause, and she shows her claws at last. If I am not in
a position to pay my note of hand for thirty pounds, which is due on
Tuesday next, her lawyer is instructed to 'take the usual course.' _If_
I am not in a position to pay it! Why, when I have settled to-d