ned to the satisfaction of friends when you appear
publicly as the wife of Luke Gregory--'long secretly married!' You see,
it will be necessary to go back a little to save appearances, on account
of Ernie!"

The miscreant! I understood him now--oh, my God, for strength to tear
his cowardly heart from his truculent body! But no; let there be no
further unavailing anger. In God's good time all should recoil on his
own head. For the present, I must bear, and make myself insensible, if
possible; and yet, I would not willingly have had the living greenness
of my spirit turned to stone, as we are told branches are in some
strange, foreign rivers--crystal-cold!

Another extract, the closing one, and then forever away with Basil
Bainrothe and his flimsy letters:

"Again, I must congratulate you on the subdued and humbled temper you
manifest. Claude, and Evelyn, and I, had just been discussing a plan for
removing you to another asylum, where stricter discipline and less
luxurious externals are employed to conquer the otherwise unmanageable
inmates. Dr. Englehart, you know, holds up the theory of indulgence to
his patients, and I am rejoiced to find his measures have at last
prevailed over your frenzy. Mabel, like your other friends, believes you
dead, and is at home with Evelyn and Claude, and is growing in beauty
and intelligence every day.

"She was quite shocked at her uncle's wild behavior, and positively
refused to go with him, is fond of Mr. Gregory, and remembers you with
affection.

"Owing to my knowledge of your condition for the last year, my dear
child, I don't blame you for any thing that is past, not even for those
delusions with regard to my own acts and intentions which formed your
mania, nor for the misfortune and sense of shame which, no doubt, caused
your hasty flight, and whose evidences you brought with you from the
raft, in the shape of a nearly year-old child.

"I remain, faithfully yours,

"B.B."

The shameful accusations which brought the blood to my brow ought to
have been easier to bear than all the rest, because so easily confuted,
and because I knew not really believed; but they were not. The very idea
of shame humiliated me more than positive ill-treatment could have done;
and, spotless though I knew myself to be (as others knew me too--all I
loved and cared for), still my purity was shocked by such injustice.

I felt like one who had gone out to walk in fresh attire, and been
mud-pelted