nge in her circumstances
as an intervention of Providence to save her from a life of poverty and
suffering; and she fancied that, if she did not love her benefactor,
feelings of gratitude and a sense of duty would always prevent him from
becoming to her an object of dislike or indifference.

How little had she studied human nature; how ignorant was she of the
mysterious movements of the human heart; and when, after much painful
experience, she acquired the fatal knowledge, how bitter were the
effects it produced upon her own.

When once his victim was in his toils, Mr. Hurdlestone did not attempt
to conceal from her his real disposition.

He laughed at her credulity in believing that love alone had actuated
him in making her his wife. He related to her, with terrible fidelity,
the scene he had witnessed between her and Algernon in the garden, and
the agonies of jealousy that he endured when he discovered that she
loved another; and he repulsed with cold and sarcastic neglect every
attempt made by Elinor to render their union more tolerable, and his
home more comfortable.

To Elinor his conduct was perfectly unaccountable. She could not believe
that he did not love her, and she was not a little mortified at what she
considered his unnatural coldness and neglect.

"Marcus," she said to him one evening, as she sat on a cushion at his
feet, after making many vain attempts to attract his notice, or win from
him one kind look or word, "you did not always treat me with
indifference; there was a time when I thought you loved me."

"There was a time, madam, when I adored you!--when I would have given
all I possessed in the world to obtain from you one smile."

"Then why this coldness? What have I done to merit your dislike?"

"You loved Algernon. You love him still. Aye, that blush! Your face
tells no falsehood. You cannot conceal it from me."

"I do not deny my love. But he is dead. Why should you be jealous of the
dead?"

Mark smiled a grim bitter smile. "But if he were alive?"

"Ah!" and she pressed her small white hand tightly on her heart. "But
then, Marcus, I should not be your wife. It would no longer be my duty
to love another."

"You think it, then, your duty to love me?"

"Yes. You are my husband. My heart is lonely and sad. It must be filled
by some object. Dear Marcus, suffer me to love you."

She laid her fair cheek meekly upon his knee, but he did not answer her
touching appeal to his sympathy with