"I must get a good night's rest, if I am to travel, to-morrow. Will you excuse me if I go upstairs, thus early?"
"Do not let me detain you a moment. Is there nothing I can do to assist you?"
"Nothing—thank you! There will be time to strap my trunks in the morning. You still think I had better go—whatever may be the weather?" stopping with the door in her hand.
"I do, certainly; that is, if you are not afraid of adding to your cold—if you are well enough."
"My cold is nothing. I have ordered breakfast at half-past six. I am glad the train does not leave so early as it did last year. Good-night!"
The cold, indifferent accents sank to the bottom of his heart like lead. What a millstone about this woman's neck was her marriage vow! His endeavors to make it lighter, and her existence endurable—the work to which he had given his best energies and wisest deliberations; the self-abnegation and prayerful struggle he had accepted as the penalty of his grievous indiscretion, had proved futile. He had guarded eye, tongue, and action for five months; drilled them in friendly looks, words, and deeds, lest a glimmer of the affection that glowed—a pent but consuming fire in his soul—should offend or dismay her; had ministered to her with a lover's constancy and tenderness without a hint of love's reward. And this was the end! Some significant glance, an intonation, an excess of solicitude for her welfare, had betrayed his design to win her anew, and she had taken the alarm; was terrified and reluctant, without the power of escape. Or her constitution—physical and spiritual—had succumbed to the attrition of duty against womanly instinct. With vain care he had kept her shackles out of sight. Everything in her surroundings; the very pronunciation of her name by acquaintances, had reminded her continually of her anomalous position. Neither wife, nor maid, she stood, according to her morbid perceptions, alone and banned, without so much as a title to the shelter of his roof, except as a bondwoman. She could not forget that she was a slave. The untamable heart—in which the "love of liberty" was a "passion," was beating itself to death against the bars he had foolishly hoped to cushion and wreathe until she should cease to feel them as a restraint.
She had not loved him when she married him. That this change in her sentiments was not a passing girlish caprice, he had evidence in the words she had written to him while the right of free speech remained to her.
"Months of doubt and suffering have brought me to the determination to confess this without reserve."
"Doubt and suffering!" What were these to the horrors of her actual bondage?
"From which I cannot release her!" he repeated, for the thousandth time.