Before the brutal husband had half finished the sentence, his wife was on her feet, with a cheek deadly pale, and eyes almost starting from her head.  Thomas Elliott was her husband and the father of her babe, and as such she had loved him with a far deeper love than he had deserved.  This had caused her to bear with coldness and neglect, and even positive unkindness without a complaint.  Sacredly had she kept from her mother even a hint of the truth.  Thus had she gone on almost from the first; for only a few months elapsed before she discovered that her image was dim on her husband’s heart.

“You needn’t stand there staring at me like one moon-struck”—­he said, with bitter sarcasm and a curl of the lip.  “What I say is the truth.  I’m going to give up, and you’ve got to go home to them that are more able to support you than I am; and who have a better right, too, I’m thinking.”

There was something so heartless and chilling in the words and manner of her husband, that Mrs. Elliott made no attempt to reply.  Covering her face with her hands, she sunk back into the chair from which she had risen, more deeply miserable than she had ever been in her life.  From this state she was aroused by the imperative question,

“Anna, what do you intend doing?”

“That is for you to say”—­was her murmured reply.

“Then, I say, go home to your father, and at once.”

Without a word the wife rose from her chair, with her infant in her arms, and pausing only long enough to put on her shawl and bonnet, left the house.

Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were sitting alone late on the afternoon of the same day, thinking about and conversing of their child.  Neither of them felt too well satisfied with the result of her marriage.  It required not even the close observation of a parent’s eye, to discover that she was far from happy.

“I wish she were only single”—­Mr. Wyman at length said.  “She married much too young—­only eighteen now, and with a cold-hearted and, I fear, unprincipled and neglectful husband.  It is sad to think of it.”

“But I was married as young as she was, Mr. Wyman?”

“Yes; but I flatter myself you made a better choice.  Your condition at eighteen was very different from what hers is now.  As I said before, I only wish she were single, and then I wouldn’t care to see her married for two or three years to come.”

“I can’t help wishing she had refused Mr. Elliott.  If she had done so, she might have been married to a much better man long before this.  Mr. Carpenter is worth a dozen of him.  Oh dear! this marriage is all a lottery, after all.  Few prizes and many blanks.  Poor Anna! she is not happy.”

At this moment the door opened, and the child of whom they were speaking, with her infant in her arms, came hurriedly in.  Her face was deadly pale, her lips tightly compressed, and her eyes widely distended and fixed.

“Anna!” exclaimed the mother, starting up quickly and springing toward her.