Incredibly savage was Thorndyke when he made that discovery; and bitter and incessant were the indignities to which he subjected his unfortunate wife, for the avowed purpose of forcing her to make a will entirely in his favor, and of course disinheriting her daughter.  These persecutions failed of their object.  An unexpected, quiet, passive, but unconquerable resistance, was opposed by the, in all other things, cowed and submissive woman, to this demand of her domineering husband.  Her failing health—­for gently nurtured and tenderly cherished as she had ever been, the callous brutality of her husband soon told upon the unhappy creature—­warned her that Mary would soon be an orphan, and that upon her firmness it depended whether the child of him to whose memory she had been, so fatally for herself, unfaithful, should be cast homeless and penniless upon the world, or inherit the wealth to which, by every principle of right and equity, she was entitled.  Come what may, this trust at least should not, she mentally resolved, be betrayed or paltered with.  Every imaginable expedient to vanquish her resolution was resorted to.  Thorndyke picked a quarrel with Ward her father, who had lived at Dale Farm since the morrow of her marriage with Woodley, and the old gentleman was compelled to leave, and take up his abode with a distant and somewhat needy relative.  Next Edward Wilford, the only son of a neighboring and prosperous farmer, who had been betrothed to Mary Woodley several months before her father’s death, was brutally insulted, and forbidden the house.  All, however, failed to shake the mother’s resolution; and at length, finding all his efforts fruitless, Thorndyke appeared to yield the point, and upon this subject at least ceased to harass his unfortunate victim.

Frequent private conferences were now held between Thorndyke, his two daughters, and Elizabeth Wareing—­a woman approaching middle-age, whom, under the specious pretence that Mrs. Thorndyke’s increasing ailments rendered the services of an experienced matron indispensable, he had lately installed at the farm.  It was quite evident to both the mother and daughter that a much greater degree of intimacy subsisted between the master and housekeeper than their relative positions warranted; and from some expressions heedlessly dropped by the woman, they suspected them to have been once on terms of confidential intimacy.  Thorndyke, I should have mentioned, was not a native of these parts:  he had answered Mr. Woodley’s advertisement for a bailiff, and his testimonials appearing satisfactory, he had been somewhat precipitately engaged.  A young man, calling himself Edward Wareing, the son of Elizabeth Wareing, and said to be engaged in an attorney’s office in Liverpool, was also a not unfrequent visitor at Dale Farm; and once he had the insolent presumption to address a note to Mary Woodley, formally tendering his hand and fortune!  This, however, did not suit Mr. Thorndyke’s views, and Mr. Edward Wareing was very effectually rebuked and silenced by his proposed father-in-law.