"No," said Gertrude; "he has taken that trouble off your hands—he has punished himself. He has traveled all over the Union in search of employment, and succeeded in nothing he has undertaken. He has met with losses and disappointments in every shape, and occupies, at present, a most inferior business position, I am told. Now that I have become famous, and it is out of his power to injure me, he quails at the mention of my name in public, and dreads nothing so much as recognition by those who are acquainted with his baseness. He sneaks through life, with the consciousness that he has played the part of a scoundrel—what could even you add to this?"
"But the idea of such a miserable apology for a man getting a divorce from a sister of mine," said John, striding impatiently across the room. "Why did you not anticipate him, Gertrude? and with right on your side, too."
"Had I been pecuniarily able to do so," replied Gertrude, "I had not the slightest wish to oppose a divorce, especially as I knew it could be obtained on no grounds that would compromise me. For months after Stahle left me, and, indeed, before, he and his spies had been on my track. Had there been a shadow of a charge they could have preferred against my good name, then would have been their hour of triumph! I have a copy of the divorce papers in my possession, and the only allegation there preferred is, that I did not accept Stahle's invitation to join him when he wrote me, in the manner I have related to you."
"But the world, Gertrude, the world," said the irritated John, "will not understand this."
"My dear John," said Gertrude, "they who desire to believe a lie, will do so in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary. But I have found out that though a person (a woman especially) may suffer much from the bitter persecution of such persons, from the general undeserved suspicion of wrong, and from the pusillanimity of those who should be her defenders, yet even in such a position, a woman can never be injured essentially, save by her own acts, for God is just, and truth and innocence will triumph. I am righted before the world; my untiring industry and uprightness of life are the refutal of his calumnies. Leave him to his kennel obscurity, my dear John. I do not now need the blow that I am sure you would not have been slow to strike for me had you known how your sister was oppressed."
"I don't know but you are right, Gertrude, and yet—if he ever should cross my path, my opinion might undergo a sudden revulsion. Does he still keep up the show of piety?"
"So I have heard," said Gertrude. "The first thing he does, when he goes into a new place is to connect himself with some church. What a pity, John, such men should bring religion into disrepute."
"You think so, do you? And yet you refuse to expose it. It is just because of this that so many hypocrites go unmasked. Sift them out, I say—if there is not a communicant left in the church. I do not believe in throwing a wide mantle over such whited sepulchers."
"Do you suppose," said Gertrude, "that they whose houses are built on such a sandy foundation will quietly see them undermined? Such a hue and cry as they will raise (all for the honor of the cause, of course!) about your 'speaking lightly of religion and its professors!'"