and well, without fail."

CHAPTER XXVII.

POISON.

The Broom-Squire did not recover from his wound with the rapidity
that might have been expected. His blood was fevered, his head in
a whirl. He could not forget what his sister had said to him
relative to Mehetabel and Iver. Jealousy gnawed in his heart like
a worm. That the painter should admire her for her beauty--that
was nothing--who did not admire her? Had she not been an object
of wonder and praise ever since she had bloomed into womanhood at
the Ship? That he was envied his beautiful wife did not surprise
him. He valued her because begrudged him by others.

He looked at himself in a broken glass he had, and sneered and
laughed when he saw his own haggard face, and contrasted it with
that of the artist. It was true that he had seen nothing to render
him suspicious, when Iver came to his house, but he had not always
been present. He had actually forced his wife against her wishes
to go to the tavern where Iver was, had thrust her, so to speak,
into his arms.

He remembered her call in the Marsh to the spirits to rid her of
some one, and he could not believe her explanation. He remembered
how that to save Iver, she had thrust the muzzle of the gun against
her own side, and had done battle with him for mastery over the
weapon. Incapable of conceiving of honor, right feeling, in any
breast, he attributed the worst motives to Mehetabel--he held her
to be sly, treacherous, and false.

Jonas had never suffered from any illness, and he made a bad
patient now. He was irritable, and he spared neither his wife,
who attended to him with self-denying patience, nor his sister,
who came in occasionally. Mehetabel hoped that his pain and
dependence on her might soften his rancorous spirit, and break
down his antagonism towards her and every one. The longer his
recovery was delayed, the more unrestrained became his temper.
He spared no one. It seemed as though his wife's patience and
attention provoked into virulent activity all that was most venomous
and vicious in his nature. Possibly he was aware that he was
unworthy of her, but could not or would not admit this to himself.
His hatred of Iver grew to frenzy. He felt that he was morally the
inferior of both the artist and of his own wife. When he was at
their mercy they had spared his life, and that life of his lay
between them and happiness. Had he not sought both theirs? Would
he have scrupled to kill eith