"There, there," said the new husband, pleased with the maternal gesture, but alarmed by her excitement, "you are overwrought. You have had no sleep. You must come and rest, my dear. Come and lie down. You can have Ruby with you, if you like—while I go and settle things at Redford. No, I won't be long; I'll just see your father, and be back by tea-time. Have the drawing-room opened, Charlotte"—it never was opened except for visitors—"and we will sit there this evening. And meanwhile, make her some tea or something, and see that she has all she wants. Come, my love—"
He led her to the door of a room, and she shrank back from it with a shriek.
"Well, well," he soothed her; "the spare room, if you like—"
"Oh, promise me—promise me—!"
"Yes, yes; just as you wish, darling. I would not hurry you."
She turned to Miss Goldsworthy and clung to her. "Save me! save me!" was what the desperate clutch meant, but what the paralysed tongue could not articulate.
She was in a high fever and delirious on her wedding night, and a week later at death's door. When she came out of her illness, reconciled to her family, meekly obedient to her husband, she was a wreck of herself—a prisoner for life, bound hand and foot, more pitiable than she would have been as a dead body fished out of the dam.
The tragic disproportion between crimes and punishments in this world!