at on her lips. The
muscles of her face became more rigid.

What if through jealousy, open discord broke out between her and
Jonas? Would it make her condition more miserable, her outlook
more desperate? She revolved in thought the events that were past.
She ranged them in their order--the proposal of Jonas, her refusal,
the humiliation to which she had been subjected by Mrs. Verstage
which had driven her to accept the man she had just rejected, the
precipitation with which the marriage had been hurried on, then
the appearance of Iver on her wedding day.

She recalled the look that passed over his face when informed that
she was a bride, the clasp of his hands, and now--now--his kiss
burned on her lips, nay, had sunk in as a drop of liquid fire, and
was consuming her heart with anguish and sweetness combined.

Was the kiss that of a brother to a sister? Was there in it, as
Iver said, no harm, no danger to herself? She thought of the journey
home from the Ship on her wedding evening, of the fifteen pounds of
which she had been robbed by her husband, the money given her by
"father" against the evil day. She had been deceived, defrauded by
the man she had sworn to honor, love, and obey. She had not
acquired love for him. Had he not by this act forfeited all claim
to both love and honor?

She thought again of Iver, of his brown, agate-like eyes, but eyes
in which there was none of the hardness of a stone. She contrasted
him with Jonas. How mean, how despicable, how narrow in mind and
in heart was the latter compared with the companion of her youth.

Mehetabel's face was bathed in perspiration. She slid to her knees
to pray; she folded her hands, and found herself repeating.
"Genesis, fifty chapters; Exodus, forty; Leviticus, twenty-seven;
Numbers, thirty-six; Deuteronomy, thirty-four; these are the books
that constitute the Pentateuch. The Book of Joshua--"

Then she checked herself. In her distress, her necessity, she
was repeating the lesson last acquired in Sunday-school, which
had gained her a prize. This was not prayer. It brought her no
consolation, it afforded her no strength. She tried to find
something to which to cling, to stay her from the despair into
which she had slipped, and could only clearly figure to herself
that "the country of the Gergesenes lay to the southeast of the
Sea of Tiberias and that a shekel weighed ten hundred-weights and
ninety-two grains, Troy weight, equal to in avoirdupois--" her