the couch, my hand was on the curtain; painful as it was to
me, I would go forth and confront them both with the acknowledgment of
their conspiracy, their fraud. I would not again listen to bitter truths
as I had done before, involuntarily, when bound hand and foot by the
weakness of my condition. I was strong and courageous now. I had no
excuse for hearing another syllable--I would defy them, utterly!

All this passed like a flash through my mind.

On what slight pivots our fate turns sometimes! How small are the
guiding-points of destiny! A momentary entanglement of my bracelet, with
one of the tassels of the curtain, delayed me an instant, inevitably, in
my impulsive endeavor to extricate myself from its meshes, and what I
then heard, determined me to remain where I was, at any cost to my own
sense of pride and honor.

Fear, abject fear, obtained complete ascendency over every sense, and
personal safety became my sole consideration. I, who had boasted so
lately of my courage, felt the cold dew of cowardice bathe my brow, its
tremor shake my frame.

They were plotting--deliberately plotting, as the price of secrecy on
one part--to shut me up in a lunatic asylum until my consent could be
obtained to that ill-starred marriage!

"Every thing is favorable to this undertaking," I heard Mr. Bainrothe
say; "her own moody and excitable condition of late--the absence of her
physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes
prove, even when not asked for an opinion!)--Mrs. Austin's testimony as
to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself--our own
disinterestedness, so fully proved by our devotion to her and Mabel,
under difficulties--her mother's mysterious malady--all these things
will make it easy to carry out this plan in which your cheerful
coincidence, and perhaps Claude's even, will be essential."

"I doubt whether you succeed in gaining him over," she remarked, coldly;
"and, as to me, I shall act as you desire, perhaps, but any thing but
'cheerfully,' I assure you. I consider it a mighty price to pay for--"
she hesitated.

"A fortune and a husband?" he queried. "Claude has his suspicions, I
well know, but they rest on me alone so far. Could he be convinced of
your part in distracting Miriam's gold from its legitimate channel,
believe me, he would turn his back on you forever! I know the man."

"Yet he saw me--he must have seen me--alter that word in the codocil to
my aunt's leg