Like all newly-married women, this
woman would have looked with horror
on any proposition for the revision of the
legal poem. Liberty would have been
desolation to her, and the protection of the
laws she would have repudiated as implying
a doubt of her husband's faith. She had
been taught to believe in men, and to honour
them; and she did not wish to unlearn her
lesson. The profound conviction of their
superiority formed one of the cardinal points
of her social creed; and young hearts are not
eager to escape from their anchorage of
trust. She was a willing slave because she
was a faithful worshipper; and it seemed to
her but fit, and right, and natural, that the
lower should be subservient to the will of
the higher. For the first few weeks all
went according to the brightness of her
belief. The newly-bound epic was written
in letters of gold, and blazoned in the brightest
colonies of youth, and hope, and love; and
she believed that the unread leaves
would continue the story of those already
turned over, and that the glories of the
future would be like to the glories of the
past. She believed as others, ardent and
loving, have believed; and she awoke, like
them, when the bitter fruit of knowledge
was between her lips, and the dead leaves
of her young hopes strewed the ground
at her feet.

The gold of the blazoned book was soon
tarnished. Its turned leaves told of love,
certainly; but of a love whose passion, when
it was burnt out, left no friendship or mental
sympathy to keep alive the pale ashes. On
the contrary, quarrels soon took the place of
fading caresses, and bitter words echoed the
lost sounds of fond phrases; no real heart-
union wove fresh ties in place of the fragile
bands which burnt like flax in their own fire;
but, with the honeymoon died out the affection
which ought to have lived through the hard
probation of time, and suffering, and distress.
It had been a love-match, but it was an ill-
assorted match as well; and want of
sympathy soon deepened into bitterness, and
thence fell backward into hatred and disgust.
The husband was a man of violent temper,
and held supreme views on marital privileges.
His wife, young, impassioned, beautiful, and
clever, was none the less his chattel; and
he treated her as such. By bitter
personal experience, he taught her that the
law which gave him all but uncontrolled
power over her as his property, was not
always  the duty of the strong to protect
the weak, but might sometimes—even in
the hands of English gentlemen—be translated
into the right of the tyrant to
oppress the helpless. From high words the
transition to rough deeds was easy and
natural. Matters grew gradually worse;
quarrels became more bitter and more
frequent, and personal violences increased.
More than once she was in mortal fear,
with marks of fingers on her throat, and
cuts and bruises on her head; more than
once relations interposed to save her from
further violence. In these quarrels perhaps
she was not wholly blameless. The rash
passion of a high-spirited girl was not the
temper best suited to such a husband's
wife. Less imaginative and less feeling, she
might have better borne the peculiar mode
of showing displeasure to which he resorted;
and had she been of a lower organisation, she
might have gained more power over a man
who did not appreciate her intellect, or the
beauty of her rich nature. As it was—he, too
violent to control his temper on the one side:
she, too rash and eager to conceal her pain
and disgust on the other—their unhappiness
became public, and by its very publicity
seemed to gain in strength. Friends interfered,
many thronging about her; some, to
advise patience; some, resolution; some, to
appeal to her wifely love, and others to her
woman's dignity; and she, halting between
the two, now consented to endure, and now
resolved to resist. So, things went on in
a sad unhinged manner; outbreaks
continually occurring, followed by promises of
reformation and renewed acts of forgiveness;
but no solid peace established, and no
real wish to amend. Once she left the
house, after a long and angry scene, during
which he struck her, and that with no gentle
hand either; and she would not return until
heart-broken petitions and solemn engagements
touched her woman's pity, and changed
her anger into sorrow. She thought, too, of her
own misdeeds; magnified the petty tempers
and girlish impertinences which had been
punished so severely; took herself to task,
while the tears streamed from her dark
eyes and steeped the black hair hanging on
her neck, until at last imagination and repentance
weighed down the balance of evil on her
own side. And then he was her husband!—the
father of her children, and once her lover
so beloved! We all have faults, and we all
need pardon, she thought; and so she forgave
him, as she had done before, and returned
submissively to his house. This was what
the Ecclesiastical law calls condonation. And
by this act of love and mercy she deprived
herself of even the small amount of protection
afforded by the law to English wives of the
nineteenth century.

They had now three children who made
up the sole summer time of her heart.
Only those who know what sunshine
the love of young and innocent children
creates in the misty darkness of an unhappy
life, can appreciate her love for hers—
three bright, noble, boys. How she loved
them! How passionately and how tenderly!
Their lisping voices charmed away her griefs,
and their young bright eyes and eager
love made her forget that she had ever cause
for regret or fear. For their sakes she
endeavoured to be patient. Her love for