es of her voice still betraying the same bitterness. "In the last
half hour I have lived over again half a life-time of misery. Close that
door!" And she pointed to the door leading into the front parlor, with a
gesture of command that shamed her brother's most forcible attempt at
dignity. Her niece closed the door, and stepped back to her chair. The
aunt retained her standing position, and a part of the time walked the
floor of the little back parlor with strides that the shorter limbs of
Emily could not have compassed, as she went on:

"I had you close that door because I did not wish to speak to the whole
house: though the whole house might hear me without disadvantage to
themselves. You do not know why I am so much excited: I will tell you.
That man--your father and my brother--did an unwise thing in recalling
the past by that brutal speech and that rough oath; but he did recall
it, and he must take the consequences. I have said that you should not
marry that man whom you detest, and you shall not--no matter how I
prevent it! But do not mistake me, Emily! I am not arranging that you
shall marry another man, and one whom your parents dislike. That is your
business, not mine."

"I will not marry against my parents' will or against yours," said
Emily, as her aunt paused for a moment--"only prevent my marrying this
man whom I dislike, without doing any crime!"

"Hush, and listen to _me_!" said the aunt, almost sternly. "Do you think
that it is of yourself alone that I am speaking? No--I am thinking and
speaking more of myself than of you. Do you guess the riddle? No, you
cannot. Emily, _I have myself once married a man whom I loathed, and I
know what it means!_"

"You, Aunt? good heavens!" was the pitying reply of the young girl,
while the usually placid widow, occasionally with both hands to her head
as if in severe suffering, still walked the room as she spoke.

"You begin to understand me, and you begin to perceive how that man
threatening to marry _you_ to a man you hate, has opened again the
wounds of my own sacrifice--a sacrifice _he_ made nearly twenty years
ago--heaven forgive him! Richard West was a gambler and a libertine.
There was an indefinable something which told me as much, very soon
after I met him. He was tall and fine-looking, and he had political
influence. My brother had a motive for courting him. He carried out that
object by introducing him to _me_. I can scarcely say that I loved
elsewhere,