born to make
everybody miserable: I am going to end it."

She wrote a little, and then she stopped, and sighed; then she wrote a
little more, and stopped, and sighed. Then she burned the letter, and
began again; and as she wrote, she sighed; and as she wrote on, she
moaned.

And, as she wrote on, the tears began to fall upon the paper.

It was piteous to see the struggle of this lovely girl, and the patient
fortitude that could sigh, and moan, and weep, yet go on doing the brave
act that made her sigh, and moan, and weep.

At last, the letter was finished, and directed; and Grace put it in her
bosom, and dismissed Jael abruptly, almost harshly, and sat down, cold
and miserable, before the fire.

At dinner-time her eyes were so red she would not appear. She pleaded
headache, and dined in her own room.

Meantime Mr. Coventry passed a bitter time.

He had heard young Little say, "Wait two years." And now Grace was
evading and procrastinating, and so, literally, obeying that young man,
with all manner of false pretenses. This was a revelation, and cast back
a bright light on many suspicious things he had observed in the church.

He was tortured with jealous agony. And it added to his misery that he
could not see his way to any hostilities.

Little could easily be driven out of the country, for that matter; he
had himself told them both how certainly that would befall him if he was
betrayed to the Unions. But honor and gratitude forbade this line; and
Coventry, in the midst of his jealous agony, resisted that temptation
fiercely, would not allow his mind even to dwell upon it for a moment.

He recalled all his experiences; and, after a sore struggle of passion,
he came to some such conclusion as this: that Grace would have married
him if she had not unexpectedly fallen in with Little, under very
peculiar and moving circumstances; that an accident of this kind would
never occur again, and he must patiently wear out the effect of it.

He had observed that in playing an uphill game of love the lover must
constantly ask himself, "What should I do, were I to listen to my
heart?" and having ascertained that, must do the opposite. So now Mr.
Coventry grimly resolved to control his wishes for a time, to hide his
jealousy, to hide his knowledge of her deceit, to hide his own anger. He
would wait some months before he again asked her to marry him, unless he
saw a change in her; and, meantime, he would lay himself out to p