Her only relief was in opium. She would stupefy herself every night with opium, and wake every morning pale, haggard, dull and heavy.
She must have sunk under her mental suffering and material malpractices but for the one purpose that had once carried her into crime and now kept her alive through the terror and remorse that were the natural consequences of that crime. She lived only for revenge—
"Like lightning fire,
To speed one bolt of ruin and expire!"
"I will live and keep sane until I degrade and destroy both Alden Lytton and Emma Cavendish, and then—I must die or go mad," she said to herself.
Such was her inner life.
Her outer life was very different from this.
She was still, to all appearance, a zealous church woman, never missing a service either on Sundays or on week-days; never neglecting the sewing-circles, the missionary meetings, the Sunday-schools, or any other of the parish works or charities, and always contributing liberally to every benevolent enterprise from the munificent income paid her quarterly by Miss Cavendish.
Since her return from Philadelphia she had not resumed her acquaintance with Alden Lytton.
They did not attend the same church, and were not in the same circle. It was a very reserved "circle" in which Mary Grey "circulated;" while Alden Lytton sought the company of professional and scholarly men.
Thus for months after their return to Richmond they did not meet.