bare my wound of

and lacerated it?

love for that sweet, injured girl, How often have you fanned the

fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?"

"I have no doubt, ma'am," he replied, "that you have kept a good account, and that it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor wretch, this was well enough—"

"Why, if," she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, "if all my other reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you for his counsellor and favorite would have almost been enough to hold their place."

"Is that a reason why you have run away with me?" he asked her tauntingly.

"Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! we meet to-night, and part to-night. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak will I stay here!"

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and griped the table with his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.

"I am a woman," she said, confronting him steadfastly, "who from her very childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has been paraded, and vended to enhance my value as if the common crier had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends have looked on