, one
evening, in the window-seat at the stairhead watching the moon rise over
the great trees of the park, when she heard loud voices in the hall
below, and peeping down, saw her father strike another man heavily
across the mouth. A sudden silence fell, and she stole away frightened
to her bed, where she sobbed herself to sleep. In the gray of the
morning, her mother had awakened her, had carried her to a window, and
knelt with her there, staring out toward the park and calling upon God
to have mercy. Through the streaming mist, there came presently toward
them two dim figures, carrying a third--what need to go on? After that,
the house became a cloister.

It chanced, one day when she was nearly twenty, that the eye of her
cousin of Markheim fell upon her. He had never married; he had been too
busy with his pleasures. But he had arrived at an age when it was
necessary to think of an heir; at an age, too, when the uneasy
consciousness began to grow within him that if he desired an heir, there
was no time to be lost. So he looked at his blooming cousin, noting the
evidences of vigorous health which glowed in eye and lip and cheek. He
knew that the girl would have no dot, but he had reached a place where
he was perfectly aware that if he wanted youth and beauty, he must take
them unadorned. So he made up his mind at once, and in due time the
marriage was arranged.

In pity, we will not dwell upon it. Those who saw the bride's face as
she entered the carriage with her husband will never forget its
expression of horror, disgust, and abject fear. A year later, the
desired heir arrived, a microcephalous idiot, to whom a merciful
providence allowed but eighteen months of life; and in due time, the
August Prince himself was gathered to his fathers.

During her period of martyrdom, the duchess had pressed her cross to her
bosom with the religious enthusiasm of a devotee hugging his barbed
instrument of torture. The consciousness that she was suffering for her
family's sake as became a daughter of the Caesars was the only thing
which enabled her to endure her shame and degradation. She donned her
widow's weeds with such depth of thankfulness as few mortals know, and
settled herself to the enjoyment of her position.

She found it on the whole a good position, unassailable, with many
desirable perquisites. She decided, no doubt, that life owed her such
tremendous arrears of happiness that she could never hope to collect
them e