Through smoke and through smother
We'll love one another!"

Cinderella, when the lover-prince discovers her and fits the crystal
slipper to her foot, makes short work of flinging away her rags; and
in some such pretty, airy, unthinking way did Susanna fling aside the
dullness, inhospitality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and depart in
a cloud of glory on her wedding journey. She had been lonely, now she
would have companionship. She had been of no consequence, now she would
be queen of her own small domain. She had been last with everybody, now
she would be first with one, at least. She had worked hard and received
neither compensation nor gratitude; henceforward her service would be
gladly rendered at an altar where votive offerings would not be taken
as a matter of course. She was only a slip of a girl now; marriage and
housewifely cares would make her a woman. Some time perhaps the last
great experience of life would come to her, and then what a crown of
joys would be hers,--love, husband, home, children! What a vision it
was, and how soon the chief glory of it faded!

Never were two beings more hopelessly unlike than John Hathaway
single and John Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few years,
nevertheless: partly because Susanna's charm was deep and penetrating,
the sort to hold a false man for a time and a true man forever; partly
because she tried, as a girl or woman has seldom tried before, to do her
duty and to keep her own ideal unshattered.

John had always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at
once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly,
or to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier
leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could
afford, and his conduct became a byword in the neighborhood. His boy
he loved. He felt on a level with Jack, could understand him, play
with him, punish him, and make friends with him; but little Sue was
different. She always seemed to him the concentrated essence of her
mother's soul, and when unhappy days came, he never looked in her
radiant, searching eyes without a consciousness of inferiority. The
little creature had loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at first,
even though she feared him; but of late she had grown shy, silent, and
timid, for his indifference chilled her and she flung herself upon
her mother's love with an almost unchildlike intensity. This unhappy
rel