reluctant voice.
“I am capable of the deepest love,” was answered.
“I know it.”
“What then?” Mrs. Dexter spoke with some eagerness.
“You are a wife.”
“I am,” with coldness.
“By your own consent?”
“It was extorted. But no matter. I accepted my present relation; and I mean to abide the contract. Oh, my friend! you know not the pain I feel in thus speaking, even to you. This is a subject over which I drew the veil of what I thought to be eternal silence. You have pushed it aside—not roughly, not with idle curiosity, but as a loving friend and counsellor. And now if you can impart strength or comfort, do so; for both are needed.”
“The language of Mrs. Anthony pained me,” said Mrs. De Lisle.
“Not more than it pained me,” was the simple answer.
“And yet, Mrs. Dexter, though I observed you closely, I did not see the indignant flush on your face, that I had hoped to see mantling there.”
“It was a simple schooling of the exterior. I felt that she was venturing on improper ground; but I did not care to let my real sentiments appear. Mrs. Anthony lacks delicacy in some things.”
“Her remarks I regarded as an outrage. But seriously, Mrs. Dexter, is your husband so much inclined to jealousy?”
“I am afraid so.”
“Do you think his purpose to leave Saratoga in the morning, springs from this cause?”
“I am not aware of any circumstance that should give rise to sudden apprehension in his mind. There is no one that I have remarked as offering me particular attentions. I am here, and cannot help the fact that gentlemen of superior taste, education, and high mental accomplishments, seem pleased with my society. I like to meet such persons—I enjoy the intercourse of mind with mind. It is the only compensating life I have. In it I forget for a little while my heart’s desolation. In all that it is possible for me to be true to my husband, I am true; and I pray always that God will give me strength to endure even unto the end. His fears wrong me! There is not one of the scores of attractive men who crowd around me in public, who has the power, by look, or word, or action, to stir my heart with even the lightest throb of tender feeling. I have locked the door, and the key is hidden.”
Mrs. De Lisle did not answer, for some time.
“Your high sense of honor, pure heart, and womanly perceptions, are guiding you right, I see!” she then remarked; “the ordeal is terrible, but you will pass through unscathed.”
“I trust so!” was murmured in a sad voice; “I trust to keep my garments unspotted. Without blame, or suspicion of wrong, I cannot hope to move onward in my difficult way. Nor can I always hope to be patient under captious treatment, and intimations of unfaithfulness. The last will doubtless come; for when the fiend jealousy has enthroned itself in a man’s heart, the most common-place actions may be construed into guilty concessions. All this will be deeply humiliating; and I know myself well enough to apprehend occasional indignant reactions, or cool defiances. I possess a high, proud spirit, which, if fairly aroused, is certain to lead me into stubborn resistance. So far I have managed to hold this spirit in abeyance; but if matters progress as they have begun, the climax of endurance will ere long be reached.”
“Great circumspection on your part will be needed,” said Mrs. De Lisle. “Remember always, your obligations as a wife. In consenting to enter into the most solemn human compact that is ever made, you assumed a position that gave you power over the happiness of another. If, as I gather from some things you have said, you went to the altar under constraint, an unloving bride, so much the more binding on you are the promises then made to seek your husband’s happiness—even at the sacrifice of your own. In that act you wronged him—wronged him as no woman has a right to wrong any man, and you can never do enough by way of reparation.”
“I was wronged,” said Mrs. Dexter, her glance brightening, and a warmth, like indignation, in her voice; “for I was dragged to that marriage-altar against my will, and almost under protest. Mr. Dexter knew that my heart was not his.”
“You were a free woman!” replied Mrs. De Lisle.
“I was not free,” Mrs. Dexter answered.
“Not free? Who or what constrained you to such an act?”
“My honor. In a moment of weakness, and under the fascination of a strong masculine will, I plighted faith with Mr. Dexter. He knew at the time that I did not love him as a woman should love the man she consents to marry. He knew that he was extorting an unwilling consent. And just so far he took an unmanly advantage of a weak young girl. But the contract once made, truth and honor required its fulfillment. At least, so said my aunt, to whom alone I confided my secret; and so said my stern convictions of duty.”
“So far from that,” replied Mrs. De Lisle, “truth and honor required its non-fulfillment; for neither in truth nor in honor, could you take the marriage vows.”
The directness with which Mrs. De Lisle stated this position of the case, startled her auditor.
“Is it not so?” was calmly asked. “You are too much in the habit of looking below the surface of things, to regard the formula of marriage as an unmeaning array of words. In their full signification, you could not utter the sentences you were required to speak—how then, as regarding truth and honor, could you pronounce them in that act of your life which, of all others, should have been most without guile? I would have torn all such extorted promises into a thousand tatters, and scattered them to the winds! The dishonor of breaking them were nothing to the wrong of fulfillment. Witness your unhappy lives!”
“Would to heaven you had been the friend of my girlhood!”
It was all the reply Mrs. Dexter made, as she bowed her head, like one pressed down by a heavy burden.
“You will now comprehend, more clearly than before,” said Mrs. De Lisle, “your present duty to your husband.
