“I trust so!” was murmured in a sad voice; “I trust to keep my garments unspotted.  Without blame, or suspicion of wrong, I cannot hope to move onward in my difficult way.  Nor can I always hope to be patient under captious treatment, and intimations of unfaithfulness.  The last will doubtless come; for when the fiend jealousy has enthroned itself in a man’s heart, the most common-place actions may be construed into guilty concessions.  All this will be deeply humiliating; and I know myself well enough to apprehend occasional indignant reactions, or cool defiances.  I possess a high, proud spirit, which, if fairly aroused, is certain to lead me into stubborn resistance.  So far I have managed to hold this spirit in abeyance; but if matters progress as they have begun, the climax of endurance will ere long be reached.”

“Great circumspection on your part will be needed,” said Mrs. De Lisle.  “Remember always, your obligations as a wife.  In consenting to enter into the most solemn human compact that is ever made, you assumed a position that gave you power over the happiness of another.  If, as I gather from some things you have said, you went to the altar under constraint, an unloving bride, so much the more binding on you are the promises then made to seek your husband’s happiness—­even at the sacrifice of your own.  In that act you wronged him—­wronged him as no woman has a right to wrong any man, and you can never do enough by way of reparation.”

“I was wronged,” said Mrs. Dexter, her glance brightening, and a warmth, like indignation, in her voice; “for I was dragged to that marriage-altar against my will, and almost under protest.  Mr. Dexter knew that my heart was not his.”

“You were a free woman!” replied Mrs. De Lisle.

“I was not free,” Mrs. Dexter answered.

“Not free?  Who or what constrained you to such an act?”

“My honor.  In a moment of weakness, and under the fascination of a strong masculine will, I plighted faith with Mr. Dexter.  He knew at the time that I did not love him as a woman should love the man she consents to marry.  He knew that he was extorting an unwilling consent.  And just so far he took an unmanly advantage of a weak young girl.  But the contract once made, truth and honor required its fulfillment.  At least, so said my aunt, to whom alone I confided my secret; and so said my stern convictions of duty.”

“So far from that,” replied Mrs. De Lisle, “truth and honor required its non-fulfillment; for neither in truth nor in honor, could you take the marriage vows.”

The directness with which Mrs. De Lisle stated this position of the case, startled her auditor.

“Is it not so?” was calmly asked.  “You are too much in the habit of looking below the surface of things, to regard the formula of marriage as an unmeaning array of words.  In their full signification, you could not utter the sentences you were required to speak—­how then, as regarding truth and honor, could you pronounce them in that act of your life which, of all others, should have been most without guile?  I would have torn all such extorted promises into a thousand tatters, and scattered them to the winds!  The dishonor of breaking them were nothing to the wrong of fulfillment.  Witness your unhappy lives!”