it was that Mr.
Seabrook got more sympathy than I did, as the unfortunate husband of a
terrible termagant, who made his life a burden to him. He could talk in
a certain way around among men, and put on an aggrieved air at home
before the boarders, and what was the use of my saying anything. If it
had not been for my little German neighbor, I should have felt utterly
forsaken by all the world. But she, whatever she thought of my domestic
affairs, was sorry for me. 'What for you cry so much all de time?' she
said to me one day. 'You makes yourself sick all de time mit cryin'; an'
your face be gettin' wite as my hankershif. De leedle boy, too, he sees
you, an' he gets all so wite as you are, all de same. Dat is not goot.
You gomes to see me, an' brings de boy to see my Hans. You get sheered
up den.' And I took her advice for Benton's sake."

"What object had Mr. Seabrook in remaining where he was so unwelcome? He
certainly entertained no hope that you would finally yield; and his
position could not have been an agreeable one, from any point of view;
for whether he was regarded as the monster he was, or only as a sadly
beshrewed husband, he must have felt himself the subject of unpleasant
remark."

"He could afford to be remarked upon when he was a free pensioner upon a
woman's bounty, and in receipt of a fine income which I earned for him
by ceaseless toil. I can see him now sitting at the bottom of the table,
my table, flourishing his white hands, and stroking his flowing blonde
beard occasionally as something very gratifying to his vanity was said;
talking and laughing with perfect unconcern, while he fattened himself
at my expense; while I, who earned and prepared his dinner for him,
gasped half fainting in the heat of a kitchen, sick in heart and body.
Do you wonder that I hated him?"

"I wonder more that you did not kill him," I said; feeling that this
would have been a case of 'justifiable homicide.'

"The impulse certainly came to me at times to kill him; or if not
exactly that, to wish him dead. Yet when the opportunity came to be
revenged upon him by fate itself, I interfered to save him. That was
strange, was it not? To be suffering as I suffered at this man's hands,
and yet when he was in peril to have compassion upon him?"

"You could not alter your nature," I said, "which is, as I told you
before, thoroughly sound and sweet. It goes against us to suffer wrong;
but it goes still harder with us to do wrong