of the two men who listened to her, though he
made no move to comfort her or allay it. The alienation thus expressed
produced its effect, and, stricken deeper than the fount of tears, she
suddenly choked back every sob and took up the thread of her narrative
with the calmness born of despair,

"These were the words, these and no others:

"'If my niece will break all ties and come to me completely unhampered,
she may hope to find a permanent home in my house and a close hold upon
my affections.

IRA T. HOUGHTALING.'

"Unhampered! with the marriage-vow scarcely cold on my lips! Without
tie! and a husband waiting below to take me to his home on the
hillside--a hillside so bare and bleak that the sight of it had sent a
shudder to my heart as the wedding ring touched my finger. The irony
of the situation was more than I could endure, and alone, with my eyes
fixed on the comfortless heavens, showing gray and cold through the
narrow panes of my windows, I sank to the floor insensible.

"When I came to myself I was still alone, and the twilight a little
more pronounced than when my misery had turned it to blackest midnight.
Rising, I read that letter again, and, plainly as the acknowledgment
betrays the selfishness lying at the basis of my character, the
temptation which thereupon seized me had never an instant of relenting
or one conscientious scruple to combat it. I simply, at that stage in my
life and experience, could not do otherwise than I did. Saying to myself
that vows, as empty of heart as mine, were void before God and man,
I sat down and wrote a few words to the man whose step on the stair I
dreaded above everything else in the world; and, leaving the note on the
table, unlocked my door and looked out. The hall connecting with my
room was empty, but not so the lower one. There I could hear voices and
laughter, Mr. Brainard's loud above all the rest,--a fatal sound to me,
cutting off all escape in that direction. But another way offered and
that one near at hand. Communicating with the very hall in which I stood
was an outside staircase running down to the road--a means of entering
and leaving a house which I never see now wherever I may encounter it,
without a gush of inward shame and terror, so instinctive and so sharp
that I have never been able to hide it from any one whose eye might
chance to be upon me at the moment. But that night I was conscious of no
shame, bar