Could she?  He had not earned compassionate consideration from her by any act of gentleness and forbearance.  He had handled the lopping-knife without ruth, and let the gaping wounds bleed as long as the bitter ichor would ooze from her heart.  She had learned hardness and self-control from the lesson, but not vindictiveness.  Now that the power was hers to visit upon his haughty spirit something of the humiliation and distress he had not spared her; that it was her turn to harangue upon mesalliances and love-matches, and want of circumspect investigation into early records before committing one’s self to a contract of marriage—­she recoiled at the thought; felt, in her exceeding pity for the trustful husband, a stirring of the love she had herself once borne him in the days when the changed homestead was her world, and its master a king among men.

And yet—­and yet—­was it the truest friendship—­the most prudent course to prolong the ignorance which left him liable at any moment to be shocked into the perpetration of some desperate deed by the discovery, through some other channel, of his wife’s perfidy, and the abominable snare that bad been woven about him!

CHAPTER XIV.

“Born dead.”

Mabel was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency over in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the parlor, and feigned to hearken to the diligent duett-practising going on at the piano, her husband and Mrs. Aylett being the performers.

Mrs. Sutton had gone home that afternoon, engaging to return for a longer sojourn in the course of a month.  Mr. Aylett read his newspaper at one side of the centre table, and his sister employed her fingers and eyes at the other with a trifle of fancy-work—–­an antimacassar she was crocheting for her hostess.  Her industrious or fidgetty habits were chronic and inveterate, and people, in remarking upon them, did not reflect that this species of restlessness is in itself a disease, seldom analyzed, more seldom cured.  There are few students or physicians of human nature, in this world of superficial observers, who go deep enough into the springs of man’s action to distinguish the external symptoms of heart-cancer from ossification, or to learn ihe difference between satiety and atrophy.  A night of nervous sleeplessness, a day of irresolution and dread, had aggravated almost beyond her control the restlessness which in Mabel was the unerring indication of unhealthiness of mind and body.  To sit still was impracticable; to talk connectedly and easily would soon be as difficult.  She was glad to see Aunt Rachel go—­immeasurably relieved when a musical evening was proposed by the brother and sister, seconding the motion with alacrity that called forth a pleased smile from the one, and a look of surprised inquisitiveness from the other.

“You have grown more fond of instrumental music,” said Mrs. Aylett, half interrogatively.  “You used always to prefer vocal.”