had sustained; but that she was calm and
composed, and only intensely anxious to be with me again. He
said he had received my letter, and concluded his with an
earnest request that I would take care of my health. I might
then expect him in two days;--I should see him again whom my
soul worshipped,--him whom I loved with a strength of passion
and a fervour of devotion which absorbed every feeling of my
heart;--and yet no faithless wife, no guilty woman, ever
looked to the return, or anticipated the presence, of the
husband she had betrayed, with more nervous terror, or more
deep depression, than I did Edward's.

His letter was in my hand, and I was gazing intently upon it,
when the door opened, and Henry came in. The blood forsook my
cheek, and I gasped for breath. Mr. Middleton's death--his
sister's grief--his pale and haggard expression of
countenance--a vague hope that he was come, at last, to set me
free forever--kept me silent and subdued. He sat down opposite
to me, and said, "I have forced my way in, and brought you
this letter."

Glancing at the table, he added, "You have received the last
account, I see. Has my sister written to you?"

I could not speak, but I took her fetter and put it into his
hands. He read it, and then laid it down with a deep sigh.

"He used me hardly, and hated the sight of me; but I respected
him, and would fain have seen his life prolonged for Mary's
sake."

There was a long pause after this; we were afraid of each
other, and of what each might say next. It was now three weeks
since we had met; an eternal separation was at hand; it rested
with Henry to decide how we should part. Would he break the
chain with which he had bound me? or would he leave upon me
for ever the mark of my abhorred slavery? I stood before him,
and fixed my eyes upon him.

"Henry, the moment is come when we must part."

"Part!" he exclaimed. "Do you think I am come to part with
you? Do you imagine that I will leave you and Edward--whom I
now hate as much as I once loved him--to exult over my
despair, and to banish me from your house after mine has been
tamed into a hell--"

"What words do you dare to utter? Do not blaspheme. Your house
is sanctified by the presence of an angel."

"It is haunted by a fiend, Ellen,--that woman who betrayed
us,--that woman who, in one of her paroxysms of rage, broke
open my desk, and drew from it those fatal letters which she
sent to Edward in the vain hope of separat