But, though willing to release her, she was not so willing herself

to be released. When I set her free, she flew at me with cat-like

intrepidity; and I found her a much more difficult customer than

her husband. Him I soon baffled. A moment sufficed to grapple with

him and wrench the stick from his hands, and then, with a moderate

exercise of agility, I contrived to spring up the stairway which I

had just descended, regain the chamber, and secure the door, before

they could overtake or annoy me with their further movements. My

wife's aunt, meanwhile, had been busy with her restoratives. Julia

was now recovering from the fainting fit; and I had the satisfaction

of hearing from one of the servants that the baffled enemy had gone

off in a fury that made their departure seem a flight rather than

a mere retreat.

I should have treated the whole event with indifference--their

rage and their regard equally--but for my suffering and sensitive

wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all

her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her

filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties,

I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an

elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when

an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated

to subdue my anger, and make the feelings of my wife, if possible,

more accessible than ever to the influences of fear and sorrow.

Only three days from our marriage had elapsed, when her father was

stricken speechless in the street. He was carried home for dead.

I have already hinted that, months before, and just after the

threatened discovery of those fraudulent measures by which he lost

his fortune, his mind had become singularly enfeebled; his memory

failing, and all his faculties of judgment--never very strong--growing

capricious, or else obtuse and unobserving. These were the symptoms

of a rapid physical change, the catastrophe of which was at hand.

How far the excitement growing out of his daughter's flight and

marriage may have precipitated this result, is problematical. It

may be said, in this place, that my wife's mother charged it all to

my account. I was pronounced the murderer of her husband. On this

head I did not reproach myself. It was necessary, however, that a

reconciliation should take place between the father and his child.

To this I had, of course, no sort of objection. But it will scarce

be believed that the miserable woman, her mother, opposed herself to

their meeting with the utmost violence of her character. Nothing

but the outcry of the family and all its friends--including

the excellent physician whose secret services had contributed so

much toward my happiness--compelled her to give way, though still

ungraciously, to the earnest entreaty of her daughter for permission

to see her father before he died! and even then, by the death-bed

of the unhappy and almost unconscious man, she recommenced the scene

of abuse and bitter reproach, which, however ample the reader and

hearer may have already found it, it appears she had left unfinished.

It was in the midst of a furious tirade, directed against myself,

chiefly, and Julia, in part, that the spasms of death, unperceived

by the mother, passed over the contracted muscles of the father's

face. The bitter speech of the blind woman--blind of heart--was actually

finished after death had given the final blow to the victim. Of

this she had no suspicion, until instructed by the piercing shrieks

of her daughter, who fell swooning upon the corse before her.




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