f it by will; but
in the event of her dying intestate, the whole descended to her daughter,
Mary Woodley.

Incredibly savage was Thorndyke when he made that discovery; and bitter
and incessant were the indignities to which he subjected his unfortunate
wife, for the avowed purpose of forcing her to make a will entirely in
his favor, and of course disinheriting her daughter. These persecutions
failed of their object. An unexpected, quiet, passive, but unconquerable
resistance, was opposed by the, in all other things, cowed and submissive
woman, to this demand of her domineering husband. Her failing health--for
gently nurtured and tenderly cherished as she had ever been, the
callous brutality of her husband soon told upon the unhappy
creature--warned her that Mary would soon be an orphan, and that upon her
firmness it depended whether the child of him to whose memory she had
been, so fatally for herself, unfaithful, should be cast homeless and
penniless upon the world, or inherit the wealth to which, by every
principle of right and equity, she was entitled. Come what may, this
trust at least should not, she mentally resolved, be betrayed or paltered
with. Every imaginable expedient to vanquish her resolution was resorted
to. Thorndyke picked a quarrel with Ward her father, who had lived at
Dale Farm since the morrow of her marriage with Woodley, and the old
gentleman was compelled to leave, and take up his abode with a distant
and somewhat needy relative. Next Edward Wilford, the only son of a
neighboring and prosperous farmer, who had been betrothed to Mary Woodley
several months before her father's death, was brutally insulted, and
forbidden the house. All, however, failed to shake the mother's
resolution; and at length, finding all his efforts fruitless, Thorndyke
appeared to yield the point, and upon this subject at least ceased to
harass his unfortunate victim.

Frequent private conferences were now held between Thorndyke, his two
daughters, and Elizabeth Wareing--a woman approaching middle-age, whom,
under the specious pretence that Mrs. Thorndyke's increasing ailments
rendered the services of an experienced matron indispensable, he had
lately installed at the farm. It was quite evident to both the mother and
daughter that a much greater degree of intimacy subsisted between the
master and housekeeper than their relative positions warranted; and from
some expressions heedlessly dropped by the woman, they suspected th