Chapter XLII

"And they dare blame her! they whose every thought
Look, utterance, act, hath more of evil in 't
Than e'er she dreamed of or could understand,
And she must blush before them, with a heart
Whose lightest throb is worth their all of life!"

In a neat, but scantily furnished apartment of a small, white cottage sat Louise Edson beside the low window which looked forth on a great frowning building with grated bars and ponderous iron doors.

"Is this a prison across the yard, aunt?" she asked of a tall, solemn woman, in a black head-dress, who had just entered the room, and stood laying some fresh fuel on the fire.

"It is the county jail," replied she.

"How it makes me shudder to look at it!" said Louise, turning from the window, and assuming a chair near her aunt, who was taking a quantity of sewing from a work-basket.

"It reminds me of a lady who was my near neighbor in Wimbledon, and who has been my sole companion for several months, to see you constantly occupied with your needle," remarked Louise, looking on her aunt as she assorted her cotton and arranged her work.

"What is the lady's name, of whom you speak?" inquired the woman.

"Mrs. Stanhope," answered Louise; "she is a kind soul. It pains me to think I shall never see her again."

"Do you not intend to return to your late home?" inquired the aunt, somewhat surprised at the words of her niece.

"Never!" returned Louise, with strong emphasis, "I could not endure it."

"Pshaw! you will get over this weakness in a little while," said her aunt. "You have half-conquered it by coming away, and you will complete the victory by returning."

"I tell you no," said Louise, somewhat angered by her aunt's persistence. "I have already written to Mr. Richard Giblet, one of the former firm of Edson & Co., to settle my affairs in Wimbledon, dispose of my late residence, and remit the proceeds to me in drafts."

The aunt looked astonished at this piece of intelligence, and said, "You have been rash and premature, my child, and I fear will regret your hasty proceedings."

"If you knew how much it relieved me to get out of that place, aunt, you would not fear I should ever wish to return. I was so near my enslaver there, and my heart said all the time, 'O, I _must_ see him!' while conscience whispered sternly, 'You _dare_ not do it.' There was a constant war 'twixt love and reason, which threatened the extermination of the latter."

"I am glad you have been ruled by your better judgment," said her aunt; "passion always leads us astray when we listen to its voice."

"That is very true," answered Louise; "but O that I had known it only by precept, and not by experience!"

"Experience is called the best teacher," remarked the aunt.

"It is the most bitter one," returned Louise. "How I wish you had been with me through the few brief years of my married life! With your kind care and admonitions I think I would never have strayed darkly into sin and error."

"We all err sometimes in our lives," said her aunt; "and I cannot discover as you have wandered so far from the paths of rectitude that your return to them should seem a thing impossible."

"But did I not tell you how I deceived my husband?" asked Louise, looking wofully in the face of her aunt.

"Yes," returned she, calmly. "Did he never deceive you?"

Louise paused a few moments, and answered, "I _was_ deceived when I married him, but it was by my own blindness. However, the deception did not last long," she added, with a spice of her old spirit.

"And when it passed away," said her aunt.

"Don't recall those terrible hours to my mind," interrupted Louise, quickly, "lest I should forget the double share of respect I owe the dead in that I failed to give them their due on earth."

"I would not have the dead wronged," returned her aunt; "but I would have the living righted. You used to be free and unrestrained in your intercourse with me in the glad days of childhood and youth. I often feared some envious sorrow would overtake you to chill and despoil that buoyant exuberance of life and gayety. You were too wildly rich in heart and soul. You wasted more love on a pet rabbit than would eke out the whole passion life of a score of poorer natures. O, Louise, I trembled when you stood before the altar and took the vows of faithfulness to Mr. Leroy Edson. I knew you fancied that you loved him, and thought in the wild potency of your passion to bear him skyward on your soaring pinions; but, ah! I saw how sadly his clogging weight would drag you to the earth."

She paused, and Louise was silent, but her face showed traces of tears.

"Do not think me severe," resumed her aunt; "I am only just. Now tell me with your old-time confidence, why did you love another man while your husband lived?"

"It was because,"---- Louise hesitated, and then added, "because I was wicked."

"And for what other reason?" pursued her aunt.

"And because I was tired," Louise went on in a dreamy tone, as if thinking aloud to herself, "and because I was hungry."

"Your expressions begin to assume the old, quaint, humorous form," said the aunt smiling. "I suppose you mean your soul was tired for want of something on which to rest, and hungry for want of its proper nourishment."

"That's what I mean, aunt; but then I do not seek excuse for the crime of stealing to appease the cravings of my hunger."

"A famishing man has never yet been hung for stealing to sustain life."

"You draw a strong comparison, aunt," said Louise, laughing in spite of herself.

"To meet a strong case," returned she. "It is a duty I owe you to use my best efforts to destroy this morbid melancholy which is preying on your spirits. I know nothing of the man you have loved. He may or may not be worthy of your affections. It is not his cause I plead. But I would divest you of the false glasses through which your sensitive brain, wrought on by high excitement, and shocked by a sudden calamity, has come to regard the events of your past life, and let you behold them again with your own natural sight. If I can effect this, I confidently trust to your good reasoning powers to set all right again."

Louise remained silent after her aunt ceased speaking, but her countenance evinced far more energy and hopefulness than at the commencement of the conversation. At length she rose and said, "Well, aunt, I think I have as much logic as my weak brain can digest in one night, so I'll retire to my bed-room, if you please."

In a few weeks, young Mrs. Edson, under the tuition of her strong-minded, sensible aunt, regained a share of her former vivacity, and declared she would be quite herself again were it not for that great black jail in the adjoining yard, which frowned on her every morning and loomed dismally in her dreams.