who had gone further than he intended,
left the room. But his words had sunk deep into the breast of this
unhappy woman, and she resolved to procure an elucidation. Agreeably to
the policy which stripped the fabled traveller of his cloak, she laid
aside the storm and preferred the sunshine: she watched a moment of
tenderness, turned the opportunity to advantage, and by little and
little she possessed herself of a secret which sickened her with shame,
disgust, and dismay. Sold! bartered! the object of a contemptuous
huxtering to the purchaser and the seller, sold, too, with a lie that
debased her at once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with
scorn! Robbed already of the name and honour of a wife, and transferred
as a harlot from the wearied arms of one leman to the capricious
caresses of another! Such was the image that rose before her; and while
it roused at one moment all her fiercer passions into madness, humbled,
with the next, her vanity into the dust. She, who knew the ruling
passion of Welford, saw at a glance the object of scorn and derision
which she had become to him. While she imagined herself the betrayer,
she had been betrayed; she saw vividly before her (and shuddered as she
saw) her husband's icy smile, his serpent eye, his features steeped in
sarcasm, and all his mocking soul stamped upon the countenance, whose
lightest derision was so galling. She turned from this picture, and
saw the courtly face of the purchaser,--his subdued smile at her
reproaches,--his latent sneer at her claims to a station which he had
been taught by the arch plotter to believe she had never possessed.
She saw his early weariness of her attractions, expressed with respect
indeed,--an insulting respect,--but felt without a scruple of remorse.
She saw in either--as around--only a reciprocation of contempt. She was
in a web of profound abasement. Even that haughty grief of conscience
for crime committed to another, which if it stings humbles not, was
swallowed up in a far more agonizing sensation, to one so vain as
the adulteress,--the burning sense of shame at having herself, while
sinning, been the duped and deceived. Her very soul was appalled with
her humiliation. The curse of Welford's vengeance was on her, and it
was wreaked to the last! Whatever kindly sentiment she might have
experienced towards her protector, was swallowed up at once by this
discovery. She could not endure the thought of meeting the eye of one
who