"Now, my dearest Mary, let me hear that you are well, and believe me ever your devoted friend,
"Maria Wheatfield[."]
Chapter XXIII.
A DIABOLICAL PLOT.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
—Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar.
No language can adequately describe the mortification and rage that filled the bosom of Mary Grey as she read the foregoing letter.
Two of her once ardent worshipers—handsome Alden Lytton and eloquent Stephen Lyle—had forsaken her shrine and were offering up their devotion to other divinities.
They had wounded her vanity to the very quick.