What a life was theirs! A life of ceaseless suspicion, and of ceaseless dread—of bitter exasperation, and of keen remorse—of unsatisfied demands, and of baffled hope.
It lasted nearly two years. Then Maxwell, at the conclusion of some brutal quarrel, burst another bloodvessel, and his life was despaired of. Mary was his nurse; he would have no other. She had to sit up with him; to attend upon him; to submit to his petty irritability, made worse by illness; to watch him in his restless slumbers, hoping that each time he closed his eyes would be the last.
One night—it was the very night on which this chapter opened—she sat by his side absorbed in gloomy thought. The candle was flaring in the socket. Everything was still. The dying man slept peacefully. With her hands drooping upon her lap, she sat allowing her thoughts to wander; and they wandered into the dim future, when, released from her tyrant, she was once more a happy woman. Long did she indulge in that sweet reverie, and when it ceased, she turned her head mechanically to look upon the sleeper. He was wide awake: his dull eyes were fixed intently upon her; and a shiver ran all over her body as she met that gaze!
"I am not dead yet!" he said, as if he had interpreted her thoughts.
She trembled slightly. With a sneer, he closed his eyes again.
Silently she sat by his side, communing with her own dark thoughts. He slept again; slept soundly. She rose, and moved about the room; it did not awaken him. She took courage:—crept down stairs, unfastened the door—and fled.
Fled, and left her tyrant dying;—fled, and left him without a human being to attend upon him—left him to die there like a dog; or to recover, if it should chance so. She cared not; her only thought was flight; and, winged with terror, she flew from the accursed home of guilt and wretchedness; and felt her heart beat distractedly, as, a homeless, penniless wanderer, she urged her steps along that dusty road under the quiet shining moon.
Ten days afterwards, Meredith Vyner received a long letter from his wife, detailing the misery of her penniless condition, and imploring pecuniary aid. The poor, old man wept bitterly over the letter, and again reproached himself with having been the cause of her ruin. He could not forget that he had loved her—had been happy with her. He forgave her for not having loved one so old as himself; and wrote to her the following reply:—
WYTTON HALL, 2nd August, 1845.
"MY DEAR WIFE,