r, and that part of a Scotch Lady Bountiful which she
had intended to play seemed to be denied to her. The whole structure
had fallen to the ground, and nothing had been left to her.

But she would not sin. Though she could not bring herself to love her
husband, she would at any rate be strong enough to get rid of that
other love. Having so resolved, she became as weak as water. She at
one time determined to be the guiding genius of the man she loved,--a
sort of devoted elder sister, intending him to be the intimate friend
of her husband; then she had told him not to come to her house, and
had been weak enough to let him know why it was that she could not
bear his presence. She had failed altogether to keep her secret, and
her life during the struggle had become so intolerable to her that
she had found herself compelled to desert her husband. He had shown
her that he, too, had discovered the truth, and then she had become
indignant, and had left him. Every place that she had inhabited
with him had become disagreeable to her. The house in London had
been so odious, that she had asked her intimate friends to come to
her in that occupied by her father. But, of all spots upon earth,
Loughlinter had been the most distasteful to her. It was there that
the sermons had been the longest, the lessons in accounts the most
obstinate, the lectures the most persevering, the dullness the most
heavy. It was there that her ears had learned the sound of the wheels
of Dr. Macnuthrie's gig. It was there that her spirit had been nearly
broken. It was there that, with spirit not broken, she had determined
to face all that the world might say of her, and fly from a tyranny
which was insupportable. And now the place was her own, and she was
told that she must go there as its owner;--go there and be potential,
and beneficent, and grandly bland with persons, all of whom knew what
had been the relations between her and her husband.

And though she had been indignant with her husband when at last she
had left him,--throwing it in his teeth as an unmanly offence that he
had accused her of the truth; though she had felt him to be a tyrant
and herself to be a thrall; though the sermons, and the lessons,
and the doctor had each, severally, seemed to her to be horrible
cruelties; yet she had known through it all that the fault had been
hers, and not his. He only did that which she should have expected
when she married him;--but she had done none of th