ch shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain:
it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to
be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such
conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused
moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than
honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous
world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her--when the cold finger
of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her
altered form--now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting
more scorpion than ever--to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with
having rightfully inherited _a curse_--to be told, in a sort of fiendish
triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's
fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed,
had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin--to know, to hear, yea, from
his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous
youth--of her too free, unsuspicious affection--had calmly been
contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love--here
was misery, here was madness!

"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind
the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret:
his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still
haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered
one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered.

"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine;
her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized;
but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of
trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for
Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of
disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the
heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of
perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister,
suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled
asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay
fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never
was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on
her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Cha