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It was a year after General Harrington's death, a steamer was passing through a channel of the East River, leaving Blackwell's Island on the left. Sitting upon the deck was a bridal party: that morning had made Lina, Ralph Harrington's wife. James Harrington had given her away, having first richly endowed the young couple, and Mabel made one of the wedding party.
Upon the shore near the end of Blackwell's Island, stands that most painful appendage to a lunatic asylum, the mad-house; looming over the water like a huge menagerie, in which wild animals are kept. Through the iron lattices, which gird in the granite walls of this building, you may at any time see the maniacs roaming to and fro, sometimes in sullen silence, sometimes shrieking out their fantasies or their rage to the winds as they whistle by, and the waters that flow on forever and ever, unconscious of the miserable secrets given to their keeping.
As the boat containing the bridal party swept by the mad-house a beautiful but most fiendish face looked out between these bars; a clenched hand was thrust through, and a storm of terrible curses hailed after Mabel and her newly married children. But the boat swept calmly by, leaving them behind. Mabel saw the clenched hand, but the curses rushed by her in one confused wail, which touched her only with gentle compassion; for she little thought that Zillah, the woman who, in seeking her life, had murdered her husband, was hurling these fiendish anathemas after her.
So in her happiness, for Mabel was happy then—she turned away from the mad-house, touched with momentary gloom and, taking James Harrington's arm moved to the other side of the boat, and leaning upon him watched the sun go down. Thus, with the rich twilight falling softly around them, these two noble beings drifted into their new life.