re say, console themselves
that they have never committed murder.

"If I had married a man I did not love," answered Mary, "I should be
more ashamed of myself than I can tell."

"That is the way of looking at such things in the class you belong to,
I dare say," rejoined Hesper; "but with us it is quite different. There
is no necessity laid upon _you. Our_ position obliges us."

"But what if God should not see it as you do?"

"If that is all you have got to bring against me!--" said Hesper, with
a forced laugh.

"But that is not all," replied Mary. "When you married, you promised
many things, not one of which you have ever done."

"Really, Mary, this is intolerable!" cried Hesper.

"I am only doing what you asked me, ma'am," said Mary. "And I have said
nothing that every one about Mr. Redmain does not know as well as I do."

Hesper wished heartily she had never challenged Mary's judgment.

"But," she resumed, more quietly, "how could you, how could any one,
how could God himself, hard as he is, ask me to fulfill the part of a
loving wife to a man like Mr. Redmain?--There is no use mincing matters
with _you,_ Mary."

"But you promised," persisted Mary. "It belongs, besides, to the very
idea of marriage."

"There are a thousand promises made every day which nobody is expected
to keep. It is the custom, the way of the world! How many of the
clergy, now, believe the things they put their names to?"

"They must answer for themselves. We are not clergymen, but women, who
ought never to say a thing except we mean it, and, when we have said
it, to stick to it."

"But just look around you, and see how many there are in precisely the
same position! Will you dare to say they are all going to be lost
because they do not behave like angels to their brutes of husbands?"

"I say, they have got to repent of behaving to their husbands as their
husbands behave to them."

"And what if they don't?"

Mary paused a little.

"Do you expect to go to heaven, ma'am?" she asked

"I hope so."

"Do you think you will like it?"

"I must say, I think it will be rather dull."

"Then, to use your own word, you must be very like lost anyway. There
does not seem to be a right place for you anywhere, and that is very
like being lost--is it not?"

Hesper laughed.

"I am pretty comfortable where I am," she said.

"Husband and all!" thought Mary, but she did not say that. What she did
say was:

"But you know you can't stay he