coming resignation, and laid
on the bed, even the marriage-bed, realizing that strange meeting of two
ends which equalizes pain and pleasure, and reduces the product to
_nil_. Nor were many hours allowed to pass when, decayed and defaced as
it was, it was consigned to a coffin without Mr. Dodds being able to
bring his resolution to the sticking point of trying to recognise in the
confused mass of muscle and bone, forming what was once a face, the
lineaments of her who had been once his pride, and now, by his own act,
had become his shame and condemnation in the sight of Heaven. Next day
she was consigned to the tomb, in so solemn a manner, that if man were
not man, one would have had a difficulty in recognising in that gentle
hand that held the head-cord, and dropped it so softly on the coffin,
the same member which drove the innocent victim into the deep waters.

There is a continuous progress in all things; a fact which we know only
after we get hold of the clue. And so, when Mrs. Mary Blyth appeared as
Mrs. Mary Dodds, in room of the domesticated Jenny, it was in perfect
accordance with the law of cause and effect. No doubt they did their
best to be happy, as all creatures do, even the devil's children, only
in a wrong shaft; but they had made that fearful miscalculation, which
is the wages of sin, when they counted upon conscience as a pimp to
their pleasures, in place of a king's-evidence against them, that king
being the Lord of heaven and earth. And so it turned out in the course
of several years, that, as their love lost its fervour, their respective
monitors acquired greater power in pleading the cause of her who was
dead, and convincing them, against their will (for the all-powerful wish
has no virtue here), that they had done a cruel thing, for which they
were amenable to an avenging guardian of the everlasting element of good
in nature's dualism. Yet, strange enough, each of the two kept his and
her own secret. Their hearts burned, even as the fire which consumes the
wicked, under the smother of a forced silence--itself a torment and an
agony; yea, neither of the two would mention the name of Jenny Dodds for
the entire world. And there was more than a mutual fear that one should
know what the other thought. Each was under a process of exculpation and
inculpation--a mutual blaming of each other in their hearts, without
ever yet a word said to indicate their thoughts. It was the quarrel of
devils, who make the