"Mrs. Cheevers is right on this subject; you cannot leave here at this time without drawing censure and, it may be, suspicion down upon yourself. I would not do it."
Supper was announced, and Mrs. Belmont, trembling with emotion, as her pride went on battling with fear and indignation, seated herself at the table, but not to eat. There was a vein of proffered wisdom in the advice given that irritated her. "Can I not judge for myself? Am I not supposed to know more about my own business than others."
Mr. Cheevers rallied her upon such a loss of appetite and the saving it would be to his pocket, a pleasantry in which the lady endeavored to join, but the repartee died on her lips, and, excusing herself, she went without farther delay to her own room.
"That woman, wife, has her own reasons for desiring to escape doing honor to Colonel Hamilton and lady, that we are not advised of. As for me, I begin to pity her! She looks as though she had lost her hold on earth and her hope of heaven!"
"How can you, Hiram."
"It is true. Perhaps Lillian ought to have written to her mother, and yet, as she declared, what could she say? It is a muddle, my good wife, sure enough, still we must keep her here until they come. That is the only clear thing I can get out of it," and he left the table.
In the room above, a tall, stately form was standing by the window, her dark eyes wandering with a listless gaze out over the gray waters of the Schuylkill, where the evening shades were slowly creeping, while within her soul the conflicting elements of warring tumults were raging. "O, wretched woman that I am!" she repeated, "What power can deliver me from myself! Great God! If Thou didst ever pity, pity now! Are there not stains on my soul that He will never blot out? Stains of—murder! O misery! 'The wicked shall not go unpunished,'—I have read it; it is true! The God I have offended has said it! What if the curtain that hides the last seventeen years from the world should be torn away!" She paced the floor as the night stole in and covered her with its darkness. O, the gloom! O, the forebodings of a sin-cursed soul.
