ic to be married out of spite as out of pity.

She knew Martin's standards of honor. He would recognize, as she did, the
justice of the Webster homestead and lands remaining in her possession;
and since the will stipulated that he must personally occupy these
properties and could neither sell, transfer, nor give them to their
rightful owner, she felt sure he would seize upon the only other means of
making her freehold legally hers. Whether he loved her or not would not
now be in his eyes the paramount issue. In wedding her he would feel he
was carrying out an act of justice which under the guise of affection it
would be quite legitimate to perform.

This solution of the difficulty, however, cleared away but the minor half
of the dilemma. Had she been willing to accept Martin's sacrifice of
himself and marry him, there still remained the wall,--the obstacle that
for generations had loomed between the peace of Howe and Webster and now
loomed 'twixt her and her lover with a magnitude it had never assumed
before.

Martin would never rebuild that wall--never!

Had he not vowed that he would be burned at the stake first? That he would
face persecution, nakedness, famine, the sword before he would do it? All
the iron of generations of Howe blood rung in the oath. He had proclaimed
the decree throughout the county. Everybody for miles around knew how he
felt. Though he loved her as man had never loved woman (a miracle which
she had no ground for supposing) he would never consent to such a
compromise of principles. The being did not exist for whom Martin Howe
would abandon his creed of honor.

She knew well that strata of hardness in his nature, the adamantine will
that wrought torture to its possessor because it could not bend. Even the
concessions he had thus far made, had, she recognized, cost him a vital
struggle. On the day of her aunt's seizure had she not witnessed the
warfare between pity and hatred, generosity and revenge? The powers of
light had triumphed, it is true; but it had been only after the bitterest
travail; and ever since she had been conscious that within his soul Martin
had viewed his victory with a smoldering, unformulated contempt. Even his
attentions to her had been paid with a blindfolded, lethargic
unwillingness, as if he offered them against the dictates of his
conscience and closed his eyes to a crisis he would not, dared not face.

It was one thing for her to light-heartedly announce that she l