it was for Mr Barnard to have jilted
Miss--(but let my very name be unpronounced)--and taken up with Miss
Martha, who had all the fortune.' Was it not a natural remark? So
natural, that every being in the country had already made it but her
whose heart it broke to hear it. I rushed from the spot, a mist
spreading before my eyes as I hastened on. I sought out Barnard; I
found him, and alone. I told him of the report I had overheard. He
said it was not new to him. I charged him with perfidy--he avowed it.
Half-dreaming, I attempted to catch his hand. He coolly withdrew it. I
knelt before him--I clasped his knees--I wept, and prayed he would
bless me by treading me to death beneath his feet. He extricated
himself with a laugh, bid me not be a fool, and left me.

"Before I rose from the spot where I had fallen, a dreadful shadow
passed, as it were, suddenly across me, and some black passion I had
never known till then took possession of my spirit. It was JEALOUSY.
I returned home, and hastened to have an interview with Martha.
Hitherto I had been of a quiet, timid disposition--I was now bold from
frenzy and betrayed affection. I upbraided my cousin with duplicity,
with meanness in receiving the addresses of the man betrothed to her
relative. She retorted by drawing comparisons between our attractions,
personal as well as pecuniary. At these I smiled--bitterly perhaps,
but still I smiled. She scoffed at my pleas that Barnard was my
affianced husband, declared her intention of marrying him, and ended
by insinuating that I had lost him by the very unguardedness of my
affection. I never smiled again.

"I was mad from that day forward. My whole existence changed. I was a
dissembler--a liar--for my life was a long lie--and, come near--I _am_
a murderer. I lived blindly on--a day was fixed for their
marriage--but, though I knew not _how it was to be_--I knew another
would never stand at the altar as his bride.

"She and I had apparently been reconciled--I saw Barnard no more, save
in her presence--I lulled them both into a belief that I was a poor,
trodden, and stingless thing.

"The Sunday preceding the wedding-day arrived. It was a lovely evening
in summer, and Martha and he and I wandered far away into the
fields--they to taste the freshness of nature, I, to wonder the
flowers did not wither beneath our tread; for we were all alike evil
and abandoned. In our way, we visited a mill that was soon to become
the property of B