How distinctly came back to her mind those nights when, lying by
Marian's side, she had put her hand over upon her face and felt the
tears on her cheeks. Those tears! The recollection of them now, and in
this connection, filled her heart with indescribable emotion. Her
mother, too, had died in the belief that Marian had fallen by the hands
of her lover or her husband. Lastly, upon the same night of Marian's
murder, Thurston Willcoxen had been unaccountably absent, during the
whole night, from the deathbed of his grandfather. And then his
incurable melancholy from that day to this--his melancholy augmented to
anguish at the annual return of this season.
And then rising, in refutation of all this evidence, was his own
irreproachable life and elevated character.
Ah! but she had, young, as she was, heard of such cases before--how in
some insanity of selfishness or frenzy of passion, a crime had been
perpetrated by one previously and afterward irreproachable in conduct.
Piercing wound after wound smote these thoughts like swift coming
arrows.
A young, immature woman, a girl of seventeen, in whose warm nature
passion and imagination so largely predominated over intellect, was but
too liable to have her reason shaken from its seat by the ordeal through
which she was forced to go.
Pages:
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327