gs you have that other people
want! Is it right to speak of yourself as unhappy?"

"Child," said the older woman, impressively, "you are young, and do not
know what you say. Does happiness consist in houses and clothes, or even
in children and friends? I have been happier in a cottage than in the
grandest house. As for friends--what friends have I? None; my husband
would never let me make friends lest I should expose my ignorance, and
disgrace him by my low birth and bringing up. I have never had a woman
friend."

"But your children," said Janetta, putting her arms tenderly round the
desolate woman's neck.

"Ah, my children! When they were babies, they were a pleasure to me. But
they have never been a pleasure since. They have been a toil and a pain
and a bondage. That began when Wyvis was a little child, and Mr. Brand
took a fancy to him and wanted to make every one believe that he was
_his_ child, not John's. I foresaw that there would be trouble, but he
would never listen to me. It was just a whim of the moment at first, and
then, when he saw that the deceit troubled me, it became a craze with
him. And whatever he said, I had to seem to agree with. I dared not
contradict him. I hated the deceit, and the more I hated it, the more he
loved it and practiced it in my hearing, until I used to be sick with
misery. Oh, my dear, it is the worst of miseries to be forced into
wrong-doing against your will."

"But why did you give way?" said Janetta, who could not fancy herself in
similar circumstances being forced into anything at all.

"My dear, he made me, I dared not cross him. He made me suffer, and he
made the children suffer if ever I opposed him. What could I do?" said
the poor woman, twisting and untwisting her thin hands, and looking
piteously into Janetta's face. "I was obliged to obey him--he was my
husband, and so much above me, so much more of a gentleman than I ever
was a lady. You know that I never could say him nay. He ruled me, as he
used to say, with a rod of iron--for he made a boast of it, my dear--and
he was never so happy, I think, as when he was torturing me and making
me wince with pain."

"He must have been----" when Janetta stopped short: she could not say
exactly what she thought of Mrs. Brand's second husband.

"He was cruel, my dear: cruel, that is, to women. Not cruel amongst his
own set--among his equals, as he would have said--not cruel to boys. But
always cruel to women. Some woman must