“Mrs. Rosslynn immediately hastened to wreak her vengeance on her step-daughter.  She set her teeth as she seized the unlucky girl, whom she found at work in the kitchen, pushed her roughly on into the narrow passage up the steep stairs and into the little back loft that the child called her own bedroom.

“Here she took a firmer grip upon the girl, and with a dog whip that she had hastily snatched from the hat rack in passing, she lashed the hapless creature over back and shoulder.

“Ann never struggled or cried out, but held her tongue in fierce wrath and stubborn endurance.  Could that woman, the victim of all ungovernable passions, have but known what she did, or foreseen its results!

“At last she ceased, pushed the bruised and wounded child away from her, sank panting to a chair, and as soon as she recovered her breath, began to insult and abuse the orphan child of her deceased husband, charging her with disgracing the house by improper conduct, of which the girl had never even dreamed; accusing her of causing the loss of their pupil and the income derived from him, and reproaching her for making discord between herself (Mrs. Rosslynn) and her husband.

“Ann replied by not one word.

“At length the maddened woman, having talked herself out of breath, got up, left the room, and locked the door, not on her victim alone, but on all the evil spirits she had raised from Tartarus and left with the girl.

“Ann sank upon the bed, weeping, moaning, and grinding her teeth, her body prostrated by pain, her soul filled with bitter wrath and scorn toward one whom she should rather have been led to love and honor.  In the fiery torture of her flesh and the humiliation of her spirit she uttered but these piteous words: 

“‘Oh, my own mother!—­oh, my lost father! do you see your child?’

“For more than an hour she lay there before the fierce smarting and burning of her scourged flesh began to subside.  The short November afternoon darkened into night.  No one came near her.  The hour for supper passed.  No one called her to the meal.  She heard the family passing to their rooms.  She heard her mother putting the other children to bed—­a duty that she herself had hitherto performed.  At last all sounds died away in the house, and she knew that all the inmates had retired, and the lights were out.  She was meditating to run away; she did not know in what direction, or to what end, farther than to escape from the home that was hateful to her.

“Evil spirits were with her, suggesting many desperate thoughts; at length they infused a deadly, horrible temptation to a deed of self-destruction so ghastly that its discovery should appal the family, the parish, and the whole world; that should cover her tormentors with shame, reproach and infamy.

“She sprang up from her bed and went to search in the drawer of a little old wooden stand, until she found a half page of note paper and a bit of lead pencil.