Chapter XXXV: Thus ran the 'last document,' commencing abruptly and without prefix;

"I have made up my mind to die. Not out of passion or
petulance,--but from deliberate choice, and as I think, necessity.
My brain is tired of problems,--my body is tired of life; it is best
to make an end. The idea of death,--which means annihilation,--is
very sweet to me. I am glad to feel that by my own will and act I
can silence this uneasy throbbing of my heart, this turmoil and heat
of my blood,--this tortured aching of my nerves. Young as I am, I
have no delight now in existence,--I see nothing but my love's
luminous eyes, his god-like features, his enthralling smile,--and
these are lost to me. For a brief while he has been my world, life
and time,--he has gone,--and without him there is no universe. How
could I endure the slow, wretched passing of hours, days, weeks,
months and years alone?--though it is better to be alone than in the
dull companionship of the self-satisfied, complacent and arrogant
fool who is my husband. He has left me for ever, so he says in a
letter the maid brought to me an hour ago. It is quite what I
expected of him,--what man of his type could find pardon for a blow
to his own _amour propre_! If he had studied my nature, entered into
my emotions, or striven in the least to guide and sustain me,--if he
had shown me any sign of a great, true love such as one sometimes
dreams of and seldom finds,--I think I should be sorry for him
now,--I should even ask his forgiveness for having married him. But
he has treated me precisely as he might treat a paid mistress,--that
is, he has fed me, clothed me, and provided me with money and jewels
in return for making me the toy of his passions,--but he has not
given me one touch of sympathy,--one proof of self-denial or humane
forbearance. Therefore, I owe him nothing. And now he, and my love
who will not be my lover, have gone away together; I am free to do
as I will with this small pulse within me called life, which is
after all, only a thread, easily broken. There is no one to say me
nay, or to hold my hand back from giving myself the final _quietus_.
It is well I have no friends; it is good for me that I have probed
the hypocrisy and social sham of the world, and that I have mastered
the following hard truths of life,--that there is no love without
lust,--no friendship without self-interest,--no religion without
avarice,--and no so-called virtue without its accompanying stronger
vice. Who, knowing these things, would care to take part in them! On
the verge of the grave I look back along the short vista of my
years, and I see myself a child in this very place, this wooded
Willowsmere; I can note how that life began to which I am about to
put an end. Pampered, petted and spoilt, told that I must 'look
pretty' and take pleasure in my clothes, I was even at the age of
ten, capable of a certain amount of coquetry. Old _roués_, smelling
of wine and tobacco, were eager to take me on their knees and pinch
my soft flesh;--they would press my innocent lips with their
withered ones,--withered and contaminated by the kisses of
_cocottes_ and 'soiled doves' of the town!--I have often wondered
how it is these men can dare to touch a young child's mouth, knowing
in themselves what beasts they are! I see my nurse,--a trained liar
and time-server, giving herself more airs than a queen, and
forbidding me to speak to this child or that child, because they
were 'beneath' me;--then came my governess, full of a prurient
prudery, as bad a woman in morals as ever lived, yet 'highly
recommended' and with excellent references, and wearing an
assumption of the strictest virtue, like many equally hypocritical
clergymen's wives I have known. I soon found her out,--for even as a
child I was painfully observant,--and the stories she and my
mother's French maid used to tell, in lowered voices now and then
broken by coarse laughter, were sufficient to enlighten me as to her
true character. Yet, beyond having a supreme contempt for the woman
who practised religious austerity outwardly, and was at heart a
rake, I gave small consideration to the difficult problem such a
nature suggested. I lived,--how strange it seems that I should be
writing now of myself, as past and done with!--yes, I lived in a
dreamy, more or less idyllic state of mind, thinking without being
conscious of thought, full of fancies concerning the flowers, trees
and birds,--wishing for things of which I knew nothing,--imagining
myself a queen at times, and again, a peasant. I was an omnivorous
reader,--and I was specially fond of poetry. I used to pore over the
mystic verse of Shelley, and judged him then as a sort of
demi-god;--and never, even when I knew all about his life, could I
realize him as a man with a thin, shrieking falsetto voice and
'loose' notions concerning women. But I am quite sure it was good
for his fame that he was drowned in early youth with so many
melancholy and dramatic surroundings,--it saved him, I consider,
from a possibly vicious and repulsive old age. I adored Keats till I
knew he had wasted his passion on a Fanny Brawn,--and then the
glamour of him vanished. I can offer no reason for this,--I merely
set down the fact. I made a hero of Lord Byron,--in fact he has
always formed for me the only heroical type of poet. Strong in
himself and pitiless in his love for women, he treated them for the
most part as they merited, considering the singular and unworthy
specimens of the sex it was his misfortune to encounter. I used to
wonder, when reading these men's amorous lines, whether love would
ever come my way, and what beatific state of emotion I should then
enjoy. Then came the rough awakening from all my dreams,--childhood
melted into womanhood,--and at sixteen I was taken up to town with
my parents to "know something of the ways and manners of society,"
before finally 'coming out.' Oh, those ways and manners! I learnt
them to perfection! Astonished at first, then bewildered, and
allowed no time to form any judgment on what I saw, I was hurried
through a general vague 'impression' of things such as I had never
imagined or dreamed of. While I was yet lost in wonderment, and kept
constantly in companionship with young girls of my own rank and age,
who nevertheless seemed much more advanced in knowledge of the world
than I, my father suddenly informed me that Willowsmere was lost to
us,--that he could not afford to keep it up,--and that we should
return there no more. Ah, what tears I shed!--what a fury of grief
consumed me!--I did not then comprehend the difficult entanglements
of either wealth or poverty;--all I could realize was that the doors
of my dear old home were closed upon me for ever. After that, I
think I grew cold and hard in disposition; I had never loved my
mother very dearly,--in fact I had seen very little of her, as she
was always away visiting, if not entertaining visitors, and she
seldom had me with her,--so that when she was suddenly struck down
by a first shock of paralysis, it affected me but little. She had
her doctors and nurses,--I had my governess still with me; and my
mother's sister, Aunt Charlotte, came to keep house for us,--so I
began to analyse society for myself, without giving any expression
of my opinions on what I observed. I was not yet 'out,' but I went
everywhere where girls of my age were invited, and perceived things
without showing that I had any faculty of perception. I cultivated a
passionless and cold exterior,--a listless, uninterested and frigid
demeanor,--for I discovered that this was accepted by many people as
dullness or stupidity, and that by assuming such a character,
certain otherwise crafty persons would talk more readily before me,
and betray themselves and their vices unawares. Thus my 'social
education' began in grim earnest;--women of title and renown would
ask me to their 'quiet teas,' because I was what they were pleased
to call a 'harmless girl--' 'rather pretty, but dull,'--and allow me
to assist them in entertaining the lovers who called upon them
while their husbands were out. I remember that on one occasion, a
great lady famous for two things, her diamonds and her intimacy with
the Queen, kissed her 'cavaliere servente,' a noted sporting earl,
with considerable _abandon_ in my presence. He muttered something
about me,--I heard it;--but his amorous mistress merely answered in
a whisper--"Oh, it's only Sibyl Elton,--she understands nothing."
Afterwards however, when he had gone, she turned to me with a grin
and remarked--"You saw me kiss Bertie, didn't you? I often do; he's
quite like my brother!" I made no reply,--I only smiled vaguely; and
the next day she sent me a valuable diamond ring, which I at once
returned to her with a prim little note, stating that I was much
obliged, but that my father considered me too young as yet to wear
diamonds. Why do I think of these trifles now I wonder!--now when I
am about to take my leave of life and all its lies! ... There is a
little bird singing outside my bedroom window,--such a pretty
creature! I suppose it is happy?--it should be, as it is not
human... The tears are in my eyes as I listen to its sweet
warbling, and think that it will be living and singing still to-day
at sunset when I am dead!

* * * * *

That last sentence was mere sentiment, for I am not sorry to die. If
I felt the least regret about it I should not carry out my
intention. I must resume my narrative,--for it is an analysis I am
trying to make of myself, to find out if I can whether there are no
excuses to be found for my particular disposition,--whether it is
not after all, the education and training I have had that have made
me what I am, or whether indeed I was born evil from the first. The
circumstances that surrounded me, did not, at any rate, tend to
soften or improve my character. I had just passed my seventeenth
birthday, when one morning my father called me into his library and
told me the true position of his affairs. I learned that he was
crippled on all sides with debt,--that he lived on advances made to
him by Jew usurers,--and that these advances were trusted to him
solely on the speculation that I, his only daughter, would make a
sufficiently rich marriage to enable him to repay all loans with
heavy interest. He went on to say that he hoped I would act
sensibly,--and that when any men showed indications of becoming
suitors for my hand, I would, before encouraging them, inform him,
in order that he might make strict enquiries as to their actual
extent of fortune. I then understood, for the first time, that I was
for sale. I listened in silence till he had finished,--then I asked
him--'Love, I suppose, is not to be considered in the matter?' He
laughed, and assured me it was much easier to love a rich man than a
poor one, as I would find out after a little experience. He added,
with some hesitation, that to help make both ends meet, as the
expenses of town life were considerable, he had arranged to take a
young American lady under his charge, a Miss Diana Chesney, who
wished to be introduced into English society, and who would pay two
thousand guineas a year to him for that privilege, and for Aunt
Charlotte's services as chaperône. I do not remember now what I said
to him when I heard this,--I know that my long suppressed feelings
broke out in a storm of fury, and that for the moment he was
completely taken aback by the force of my indignation. An American
boarder in _our_ house!--it seemed to me as outrageous and
undignified as the conduct of a person I once heard of, who,
favoured by the Queen's patronage with 'free' apartments in
Kensington Palace, took from time to time on the sly, an American or
Colonial 'paying-guest,' who adopted forthwith the address of Her
Majesty's birthplace as her own, thus lowering the whole prestige of
that historic habitation. My wrath however was useless;--the bargain
was arranged,--my father, regardless of his proud lineage and the
social dignity of his position, had degraded himself, in my opinion,
to the level of a sort of superior lodging-house keeper,--and from
that time I lost all my former respect for him. Of course it can be
argued that I was wrong,--that I ought to have honoured him for
turning his name to monetary account by loaning it out as a
protective shield and panoply for an American woman without
anything but the dollars of a vulgar 'railway-king' to back her up
in society,--but I could not see it in that light. I retreated into
myself more than ever,--and became more than pleasantly known for my
coldness, reserve and hauteur. Miss Chesney came, and strove hard to
be my friend,--but she soon found that impossible. She is a
good-hearted creature I believe,--but she is badly bred and badly
trained as all her compatriots are, more or less, despite their
smattering of an European education; I disliked her from the first,
and have spared no pains to show it. Yet I know she will be Countess
of Elton as soon as it is decently possible,--say, after the year's
ceremonious mourning for my mother has expired, and perhaps three
months' hypocritical wearing of black for me,--my father believes
himself to be still young and passably good-looking, and he is quite
incapable of resisting the fortune she will bring him. When she took
up her fixed abode in our house and Aunt Charlotte became her paid
chaperône, I seldom went out to any social gatherings, for I could
not endure the idea of being seen in her companionship. I kept to my
own room a great deal, and thus secluded, read many books. All the
fashionable fiction of the day passed through my hands, much to my
gradual enlightenment, if not to my edification. One day,--a day
that is stamped on my memory as a kind of turning-point in my
life,--I read a novel by a woman which I did not at first entirely
understand,--but on going over some of its passages a second time,
all at once its horrible lasciviousness flashed upon me, and filled
me with such genuine disgust that I flung it on the ground in a fit
of loathing and contempt. Yet I had seen it praised in all the
leading journals of the day; its obscenities were hinted at as
'daring,'--its vulgarities were quoted as 'brilliant wit,'--in fact
so many laudatory columns were written about it in the press that I
resolved to read it again. Encouraged by the 'literary censors' of
the time, I did so, and little by little the insidious abomination
of it filtered into my mind and _stayed there_. I began to think
about it,--and by-and-by found pleasure in thinking about it. I
sent for other books by the same tainted hand, and my appetite for
that kind of prurient romance grew keener. At this particular
juncture as chance or fate would have it, an acquaintance of mine,
the daughter of a Marchioness, a girl with large black eyes, and
those full protruding lips which remind one unconsciously of a
swine's snout, brought me two or three odd volumes of the poems of
Swinburne. Always devoted to poetry, and considering it to be the
highest of the arts, and up to that period having been ignorant of
this writer's work, I turned over the books with eagerness,
expecting to enjoy the usual sublime emotions which it is the
privilege and glory of the poet to inspire in mortals less divinely
endowed than himself, and who turn to him

"for help to climb
Beyond the highest peaks of time."

Now I should like, if I could do so, to explain clearly the effect
of this satyr-songster upon my mind,--for I believe there are many
women to whom his works have been deadlier than the deadliest
poison, and far more soul-corrupting than any book of Zola's or the
most pernicious of modern French writers. At first I read the poems
quickly, with a certain pleasure in the musical swing and jangle of
rhythm, and without paying much attention to the subject-matter of
the verse,--but presently, as though a lurid blaze of lightning had
stripped a fair tree of its adorning leaves, my senses suddenly
perceived the cruelty and sensuality concealed under the ornate
language and persuasive rhymes,--and for a moment I paused in my
reading, and closed my eyes, shuddering and sick at heart. Was human
nature as base and abandoned as this man declared it to be? Was
there no God but Lust? Were men and women lower and more depraved in
their passions and appetites than the very beasts? I mused and
dreamed,--I pored over the 'Laus Veneris'--'Faustine' and
'Anactoria,' till I felt myself being dragged down to the level of
the mind that conceived such outrages to decency,--I drank in the
poet's own fiendish contempt of God, and I read over and over again
his verses 'Before a Crucifix' till I knew them by heart;--till they
rang in my brain as persistently as any nursery jingle, and drove my
thoughts into as haughty a scorn of Christ and His teachings, as any
unbelieving Jew. It is nothing to me now,--now, when without hope,
or faith or love, I am about to take the final plunge into eternal
darkness and silence,--but for the sake of those who _have_ the
comfort of a religion I ask, why, in a so-called Christian country,
is such a hideous blasphemy as 'Before a Crucifix' allowed to
circulate among the people without so much as one reproof from those
who elect themselves judges of literature? I have seen many noble
writers condemned unheard,--many have been accused of blasphemy,
whose works tend quite the other way,--but these lines are permitted
to work their cruel mischief unchecked, and the writer of them is
glorified as though he were a benefactor to mankind. I quote them
here, from bitter memory, that I may not be deemed as exaggerating
their nature--

"So when our souls look back to thee,
They sicken, seeing against thy side,
_Too foul to speak of or to see_,
The leprous likeness of a bride,
Whose kissing lips through his lips grown
_Leave their God rotten to the bone_.

When we would see thee man, and know
What heart thou had'st towards man indeed,
Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo,
The lips of priests that pray and feed,
_While their own hell's worm curls and licks
The poison of the crucifix_.

Thou bad'st the children come to thee,--
_What children now but curses come_,
What manhood in that God can be
Who sees their worship and is dumb?--
No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died
_Is this, their Carrion Crucified!_

Nay, if their God and thou be one
If thou and _this thing_ be the same,
Thou should'st not look upon the sun,
_The sun grows haggard at thy name!_
Come down, be done with, cease, give o'er,
Hide thyself, strive not, _be no more!_"

From the time of reading this, I used to think of Christ as 'carrion
crucified';--if I ever thought at all. I found out that no one had
ever reproached Swinburne for this term,--that it did not interfere
with his chances for the Laureateship,--and that not even a priest
of the church had been bold-spoken or zealous enough in his Master's
cause to publicly resent the shameless outrage. So I concluded that
Swinburne must, after all, be right in his opinions, and I followed
the lazy and unthinking course of social movement, spending my days
with such literature as stored my brain with a complete knowledge of
things evil and pernicious. Whatever soul I had in me was killed;
the freshness of my mind was gone,--Swinburne, among others, had
helped me to live mentally, if not physically, through such a phase
of vice as had poisoned my thoughts for ever. I understand there is
some vague law in existence about placing an interdiction on certain
books considered injurious to public morals,--if there is such a
rule, it has been curiously lax concerning the author of
'Anactoria'--who, by virtue of being a poet, passes unquestioned
into many a home, carrying impure suggestion into minds that were
once cleanly and simple. As for me, after I had studied his verse to
my heart's content, nothing remained sacred,--I judged men as beasts
and women as little better,--I had no belief in honour, virtue or
truth,--and I was absolutely indifferent to all things save one, and
that was my resolve to have my own way as far as love was concerned.
I might be forced to marry without love for purely
money-considerations,--but all the same, love I would have, or what
I called love;--not an 'ideal' passion by any means, but precisely
what Mr Swinburne and a few of the most-praised novelists of the day
had taught me to consider as love. I began to wonder when and how I
should meet my lover,--such thoughts as I had at this time indeed
would have made moralists stare and uplift their hands in
horror,--but to the exterior world I was the very pink and pattern
of maidenly decorum, reserve and pride. Men desired, but feared me;
for I never gave them any encouragement, seeing as yet none among
them whom I deemed worthy of such love as I could give. The majority
resembled carefully trained baboons,--respectably clothed and
artistically shaven,--but nevertheless all with the spasmodic grin,
the leering eye and the uncouth gestures of the hairy woodland
monster. When I was just eighteen I 'came out' in earnest--that is,
I was presented at Court with all the foolish and farcical pomp
practised on such occasions. I was told before going that it was a
great and necessary thing to be 'presented,'--that it was a
guarantee of position, and above all of reputation,--the Queen
received none whose conduct was not rigidly correct and virtuous.
What humbug it all was!--I laughed then, and I can smile now to
think of it,--why, the very woman who presented me had two
illegitimate sons, unknown to her lawful husband, and she was not
the only playful sinner in the Court comedy! Some women were there
that day whom since even _I_ would not receive--so openly infamous
are their lives and characters, yet they make their demure curtseys
before the Throne at stated times, and assume to be the very
patterns of virtue and austerity. Now and then, it chances in the
case of an exceedingly beautiful woman, of whom all the others are
jealous, that for her little slips she is selected as an 'example'
and excluded from Court, while her plainer sisters, though sinning
seventy times seven against all the laws of decency and morality,
are still received,--but otherwise, there is very little real care
exercised as to the character and prestige of the women whom the
Queen receives. If any one of them _is_ refused, it is certain she
adds to her social enormities, the greater crime of being beautiful,
otherwise there would be no one to whisper away her reputation! I
was what is called a 'success' on my presentation day. That is, I
was stared at, and openly flattered by certain members of my sex who
were too old and ugly to be jealous, and treated with insolent
contempt by those who were young enough to be my rivals. There was a
great crush to get into the Throne-Room; and some of the ladies used
rather strong language. One duchess, just in front of me, said to
her companion--'Do as I do,--_kick out_! Bruise their shins for
them--as hard as you can,--we shall get on faster then!' This choice
remark was accompanied by the grin of a fishwife and the stare of a
drab. Yet it was a 'great' lady who spoke,--not a Transatlantic
importation, but a woman of distinguished lineage and connection.
Her observation however was only one out of many similar speeches
which I heard on all sides of me during the 'distinguished'
mélée,--a thoroughly ill-mannered 'crush,' which struck me as
supremely vulgar and totally unfitting the dignity of our
Sovereign's court. When I curtsied before the Throne at last, and
saw the majesty of the Empire represented by a kindly faced old
lady, looking very tired and bored, whose hand was as cold as ice
when I kissed it, I was conscious of an intense feeling of pity for
her in her high estate. Who would be a Monarch, to be doomed to the
perpetual receiving of a company of fools! I got through my duties
quickly, and returned home more or less wearied out and disgusted
with the whole ceremony,--and next day I found that my 'debût' had
given me the position of a 'leading beauty'; or in other words that
I was now formally put up for sale. That is really what is meant by
being 'presented' and 'coming out,'--these are the fancy terms of
one's parental auctioneer. My life was now passed in dressing,
having my photograph taken, giving 'sittings' to aspiring
fashionable painters, and being 'inspected' by men with a view to
matrimony. It was distinctly understood in society that I was not to
be sold under a certain figure per annum,--and the price was too
high for most would-be purchasers. How sick I grew of my constant
exhibition in the marriage-market! What contempt and hatred was
fostered in me for the mean and pitiable hypocrisies of my set! I
was not long in discovering that money was the chief-motive power of
all social success,--that the proudest and highest personages in
the world could be easily gathered together under the roof of any
vulgar plebeian who happened to have enough cash to feed and
entertain them. As an example of this, I remember a woman, ugly,
passée and squint-eyed, who during her father's life was only
allowed about half-a-crown a week as pocket-money up to her fortieth
year,--and who, when that father died, leaving her in possession of
half his fortune, (the other half going to illegitimate children of
whom she had never heard, he having always posed as a pattern of
immaculate virtue) suddenly blossomed out as a 'leader' of fashion,
and succeeded, through cautious scheming and ungrudging toadyism, in
assembling some of the highest people in the land under her roof.
Ugly and passée though she was, and verging towards fifty, with
neither grace, wit, nor intelligence, through the power of her cash
alone she invited Royal dukes and 'titles' generally to her dinners
and dances,--and it is to their shame that they actually accepted
her invitations. Such voluntary degradations on the part of really
well-connected people I have never been able to understand,--it is
not as if they were actually in want of food or amusement, for they
have a surfeit of both every season,--and it seems to me that they
ought to show a better example than to flock in crowds to the
entertainments of a mere uninteresting and ugly nobody just because
she happens to have money. I never entered her house myself though
she had the audacity to invite me,--I learned moreover, that she had
promised a friend of mine a hundred guineas if she could persuade me
to make one appearance in her rooms. For my renown as a 'beauty'
combined with my pride and exclusiveness, would have given her
parties a _prestige_ greater than even Royalty could bestow,--_she_
knew that and _I_ knew that,--and knowing it, never condescended to
so much as notice her by a bow. But though I took a certain
satisfaction in thus revenging myself on the atrocious vulgarity of
_parvenus_ and social interlopers, I grew intensely weary of the
monotony and emptiness of what fashionable folks call 'amusement,'
and presently falling ill of a nervous fever, I was sent down to
the seaside for a few weeks' change of air with a young cousin of
mine, a girl I rather liked because she was so different to myself.
Her name was Eva Maitland--she was but sixteen and extremely
delicate--poor little soul! she died two months before my marriage.
She and I, and a maid to attend us, went down to Cromer,--and one
day, sitting on the cliffs together, she asked me timidly if I knew
an author named Mavis Clare? I told her no,--whereupon she handed me
a book called 'The Wings of Psyche.'

"Do read it!" she said earnestly--"It will make you feel so happy!"

I laughed. The idea of a modern author writing anything to make one
feel happy, seemed to me quite ludicrous, the aim of most of them
being to awaken a disgust of life, and a hatred of one's
fellow-creatures. However, to please Eva, I read the 'Wings of
Psyche,'--and if it did not make me actually happy, it moved me to a
great wonder and deep reverence for the woman-writer of such a book.
I found out all about her,--that she was young, good-looking, of a
noble character and unblemished reputation, and that her only
enemies were the press-critics. This last point was so much in her
favour with me that I at once bought everything she had ever
written, and her works became, as it were, my haven of rest. Her
theories of life are strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful;--though I
have not been able to accept them or work them out in my own case, I
have always felt soothed and comforted for a while in the very act
of wishing they were true. And the woman is like her
books,--strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful,--how odd it is to
think that she is within ten minutes walk of me now!--I could send
for her if I liked, and tell her all,--but she would prevent me
carrying out my resolve. She would cling to me woman-like and kiss
me, and hold my hands and say 'No, Sibyl, no! You are not
yourself,--you must come to me and rest!' An odd fancy has seized
me, ... I will open my window and call her very gently,--she might
be in the garden coming here to see me,--and if she hears and
answers, who knows!--why, perhaps my ideas may change, and fate
itself may take a different course!

* * * * *

Well, I have called her. I have sent her name 'Mavis!' softly out on
the sunshine and still air three times, and only a little brown
namesake of hers, a thrush, swinging on a branch of fir, answered me
with his low autumnal piping. Mavis! She will not come,--to-day God
will not make her His messenger. She cannot guess--she does not know
this tragedy of my heart, greater and more poignant than all the
tragedies of fiction. If she did know me as I am, I wonder what she
would think of me!

* * * * *

Let me go back to the time when love came to me,--love, ardent,
passionate, and eternal! Ah, what wild joy thrilled through me! what
mad ecstasy fired my blood!--what delirious dreams possessed my
brain!--I saw Lucio,--and it seemed as if the splendid eyes of some
great angel had flashed a glory in my soul! With him came his
friend, the foil to his beauty,--the arrogant, self-satisfied fool
of a millionaire, Geoffrey Tempest,--he who bought me, and who by
virtue of his purchase, is entitled by law to call himself my
husband ..."

Here I paused in my reading and looked up. The dead woman's eyes appeared now to regard me as steadily as herself in the opposite mirror,--the head was a little more dropped forward on the breast, and the whole face very nearly resembled that of the late Countess of Elton when the last shock of paralysis had rendered her hideous disfigurement complete.

"To think I loved _that_!" I said aloud, pointing at the corpse's ghastly reflection--"Fool that I was indeed!--as great a fool as all men are who barter their lives for the possession of a woman's mere body! Why if there were any life after death,--if such a creature had a soul that at all resembled this poisoned clay, the very devils might turn away aghast from such a loathly comrade!"

The candles flickered and the dead face seemed to smile,--a clock chimed in the adjoining room, but I did not count the hour,--I merely arranged the manuscript pages I held more methodically, and read on with renewed attention.