and had placed that letter in
her hand, and told her he knew her guilt. This was but conjecture--a wild
and improbable one, perhaps.

Charles Mardyn came not again to the Hall. What he and Clara Daventry
thought of what had passed, was known only to themselves. A year went on,
and Clara and her father lived alone--a year of terror to the former, for
from that terrible night her father had become subject to bursts of savage
passion that filled her with alarm for her own safety: these, followed by
long fits of moody silence, rendered her life, for a year, harassed and
wretched; but then settling into confirmed insanity, released her from his
violence. Sir John Daventry was removed to an asylum, and Clara was
mistress of the Hall. Another year passed, and she became the wife of
Charles Mardyn. It was now the harvest of their labors, and reaped as such
harvests must be. The pleasures and amusements of a London life had grown
distasteful to Mardyn--they palled on his senses, and he sought change in a
residence at the Hall; but here greater discontent awaited him. The force
of conscience allowed them not happiness in a place peopled with such
associations: they were childless, they lived in solitary state, unvisited
by those of their own rank, who were deterred from making overtures of
intimacy by the stories that were whispered affixing discredit to his
name; his pride and violent temper were ill fitted to brook this neglect;
in disgust, they left Daventry, and went to Mardyn Park, an old seat left
him by his mother, on the coast of Dorsetshire. It was wildly situated,
and had been long uninhabited; and in this lonely residence the cup of
Clara's wretchedness was filled to overflowing. In Mardyn there was now no
trace left of the man who had once captivated her fancy; prematurely old,
soured in temper, he had become brutal and overbearing; for Clara he had
cast off every semblance of decency, and indifference was now usurped by
hate and violence; their childless condition was made a constant, source
of bitter reproach from her husband. Time brought no alleviation to this
state of wretchedness, but rather increased their evil passions and mutual
abhorrence. They had long and bitterly disputed one day, after dinner, and
each reminded the other of their sins with a vehemence of reproach that,
from the lips of any other, must have, overwhelmed the guilty pair with
shame and terror. Driven from the room by Mardyn's unmanly violence