uments, entreaties, or even tears, could prevail with the
obstinate bride to relax one single degree of her unforgiving antagonism
to her detested bridegroom.

"Mother," she said, with sorrowful bitterness, "you are well now;
indeed, you never were so ill as I was led to believe; and you are
independent. I parted with my only hope of happiness in life to render
you so; I sold myself in a formal marriage to be the legal medium of
endowing Dr. Grimshaw with a certain landed estate. Even into that
measure I was deceived--no more of that! it crazes me! The conditions
are all fulfilled; he will have the property, and you are independent.
And now he has no further claim upon me, and no power over me!"

"He has, Jacquelina; and it is only Dr. Grimshaw's forbearance that
permits you to indulge in this wicked whim."

"His forbearance! Oh! hasn't he been forbearing, though!" she exclaimed,
with a mocking laugh.

"Yes; he has, little as you are disposed to acknowledge it. You do not
seem to know that he can compel your submission!"

"Can he!" she hissed, drawing her breath sharply through her clenched
teeth, and clutching her fingers convulsively, while a white ring
gleamed around the blue iris of her dilated eyes. "Let him try! let him
drive me to desperation, and then learn how spirits dare to escape! But
he will not do that. Mimmy! he reads me better than you do; he knows
that he must not urge me beyond my powers of endurance. No, mother! Let
him take my uncle into his counsels again, if he pleases; let them
combine all their ingenuity, and wickedness, and power, and bring them
all to bear on me at once; let them do their worst--they shall not gain
one concession from me; not one smile, not one word, not one single look
of tolerance--so help me heaven! And they know it, mother!--they know
it! And why? You are secured from their malice; now they can turn no
screws upon my heart-strings!--and I am free! They know it, mother--they
know it, if you do not."

"But, Jacquelina, this is a very, very wicked life to lead! You are
living in a state of mortal sin while you persist in this shocking
rebellion against the authority and just rights of your husband."

"He is not my husband! that I utterly deny! I have never made him such!
There was nothing in our nominal marriage to give him that claim. It was
a mere legal form, for a mercenary purpose. It was a wicked and shameful
subterfuge; a sacrilegious desecration of God's holy alt