The aunt looked astonished at this piece of intelligence, and said, "You have been rash and premature, my child, and I fear will regret your hasty proceedings."
"If you knew how much it relieved me to get out of that place, aunt, you would not fear I should ever wish to return. I was so near my enslaver there, and my heart said all the time, 'O, I must see him!' while conscience whispered sternly, 'You dare not do it.' There was a constant war 'twixt love and reason, which threatened the extermination of the latter."
"I am glad you have been ruled by your better judgment," said her aunt; "passion always leads us astray when we listen to its voice."
"That is very true," answered Louise; "but O that I had known it only by precept, and not by experience!"
"Experience is called the best teacher," remarked the aunt.
"It is the most bitter one," returned Louise. "How I wish you had been with me through the few brief years of my married life! With your kind care and admonitions I think I would never have strayed darkly into sin and error."
"We all err sometimes in our lives," said her aunt; "and I cannot discover as you have wandered so far from the paths of rectitude that your return to them should seem a thing impossible."
"But did I not tell you how I deceived my husband?" asked Louise, looking wofully in the face of her aunt.
"Yes," returned she, calmly. "Did he never deceive you?"
Louise paused a few moments, and answered, "I was deceived when I married him, but it was by my own blindness. However, the deception did not last long," she added, with a spice of her old spirit.