? Placed between those two cruel
alternatives, which could I choose? Think of your own frailties, and
have some mercy on mine. I turned my back on both the alternatives.
Those two agreeable fiends, Prevarication and Deceit, took me, as it
were, softly by the hand: "Don't commit yourself either way, my dear,"
they said, in their most persuasive manner. "Write just enough to
compose your mother-in-law and to satisfy your husband. You have got
time before you. Wait and see if Time doesn't stand your friend, and get
you out of the difficulty."

Infamous advice! And yet I took it--I, who had been well brought up, and
who ought to have known better. You who read this shameful confession
would have known better, I am sure. _You_ are not included, in the
Prayer-book category, among the "miserable sinners."

Well! well! let me have virtue enough to tell the truth. In writing to
my mother-in-law, I informed her that it had been found necessary to
remove Miserrimus Dexter to an asylum--and I left her to draw her own
conclusions from that fact, unenlightened by so much as one word of
additional information. In the same way, I told my husband a part of the
truth, and no more. I said I forgave him with all my heart--and I did!
I said he had only to come to me, and I would receive him with open
arms--and so I would! As for the rest, let me say with Hamlet--"The rest
is silence."

Having dispatched my unworthy letters, I found myself growing restless,
and feeling the want of a change. It would be necessary to wait at least
eight or nine days before we could hope to hear by telegraph from New
York. I bade farewell for a time to my dear and admirable Benjamin, and
betook myself to my old home in the North, at the vicarage of my uncle
Starkweather. My journey to Spain to nurse Eustace had made my peace
with my worthy relatives; we had exchanged friendly letters; and I had
promised to be their guest as soon as it was possible for me to leave
London.

I passed a quiet and (all things considered) a happy time among the old
scenes. I visited once more the bank by the river-side, where Eustace
and I had first met. I walked again on the lawn and loitered through the
shrubbery--those favorite haunts in which we had so often talked over
our troubles, and so often forgotten them in a kiss. How sadly and
strangely had our lives been parted since that time! How uncertain still
was the fortune which the future had in store for us!

The associat