n Henry to madness, and Ellen (as she
supposed) to self-destruction. Through her grandmother's tardy
and unavailing misgivings, she learnt the details of that
obstinate belief in the lost Ellen's guilt which had led her
to hate and persecute her. She heard from her lips how that
sentiment had grown into a passion when fostered by a bitter
and burning resentment; how, under the influence of that
feeling, she had one night made her way into the house at
Elmsley at dusk, with the intention of upbraiding Henry, and
denouncing Ellen. She had found her alone, and asleep before
the organ on which she had been playing. A savage hatred
filled her soul, and she bent over that sleeping form with a
fierce impulse to revenge upon her at once the death of Julia,
and Henry's desertion of her own child. Conscience and terror
alike checked her uplifted arm; she withdrew in silence, but
left behind her the first of that series of mysterious
threats, by which she haunted the mind, and scared the peace
of that wretched and deeply-tried being. She confessed to
Alice how she had employed and excited Robert Harding to act
the part of a spy, to dodge the steps and watch the actions of
her faithless husband, and of the unhappy object of his fatal
passion. A superstitious belief in a mysterious call to
denounce and to visit the crime she had witnessed, constantly
counteracted by the influence which Henry possessed over her,
and an intense anxiety for the innocent girl she had committed
to his reckless hands, had kept her in a state of mind
bordering on distraction. Harding was one of those men, who,
dogged and obstinate in one respect, was weak and manageable
in all others. He blindly followed her dictates, as long as
she persuaded him that her aim was to protect or to avenge
Alice, whom he loved with an instinctive, faithful, and humble
devotion. He shared her hatred of Ellen, and on the day of her
marriage had mixed with the crowd at the church door, and
thrust into her hand that warning which had been so awfully
realised. At the time of the election at--, he had watched
from the gallery where he stood, with a strange mixture of
grief and rage, Alice's altered countenance, and her husband's
open and shameless devotion to her rival. He had in his
possession one of those letters which Mrs. Tracy had so often
written and then recalled; he resolved to deliver it at once,
and thus bring sudden disgrace and misery upon that guilty
pair whose des