regard the formula of
marriage as an unmeaning array of words. In their full signification,
you could not utter the sentences you were required to speak--how
then, as regarding truth and honor, could you pronounce them in that
act of your life which, of all others, should have been most without
guile? I would have torn all such extorted promises into a thousand
tatters, and scattered them to the winds! The dishonor of breaking
them were nothing to the wrong of fulfillment. Witness your unhappy
lives!"

"Would to heaven you had been the friend of my girlhood!"

It was all the reply Mrs. Dexter made, as she bowed her head, like
one pressed down by a heavy burden.

"You will now comprehend, more clearly than before," said Mrs. De
Lisle, "your present duty to your husband. He thought that he was
gaining a wife, and you, in wedding him promised to him to be a
wife--promised with a deep conviction in your soul that the words
were empty utterances. The case is a sad one, viewed in any aspect;
but pardon me for saying, that you were most to blame. He was an
ardent lover, whom you had fascinated; a man of superficial
character, and not competent, at the time, to weigh the consequences
of an act he was so eager to precipitate. To possess, he imagined
was to enjoy. But you were better versed in the heart's lore, and
knew he would wake up, ere many moons had passed, to the sad
discovery that what he had wooed as substance was only a cheating
shadow. And he is waking up. Every day he is becoming more and more
clearly convinced that you do not love him, and can never be to him
the wife he had fondly hoped to gain. Have you not laid upon
yourself a binding obligation? Is it a light thing so to mar the
whole life of man? Your duty is plain, Mrs. Dexter. Yield all to him
you can, and put on towards him always the sunniest aspects and
gentlest semblances of your character. If he is capricious, humor
him; if suspicious, act with all promptness in removing suspicion to
the extent of your power. Make soft the links of the chain that
binds you together, with downy coverings. Truth, honor, duty,
religion, all require this."

"Dear friend!" said Mrs. Dexter, grasping the hand of Mrs. De Lisle,
"you have lifted me out of a thick atmosphere, through which my eyes
saw everything in an uncertain light, up into a clear seeing region.
Yes, truth, honor, duty, religion, all speak to my convictions; and
with all the truth that in me lieth, will