It was about this time that a friend of my mother made a confidante of me, disclosing deep wrongs endured through her husband, especially in previous years. Whispering these cruelties to me, even when we were alone in the house, she would interrupt her dramatic recital again and again to make me promise never to divulge them, declaring her parents would force her to leave her husband if they learned about it all. It was a grave wrong to burden a young girl with this hidden sorrow. But, nervous and sickly, she craved the sympathy I was ready to give; yet it was a shadow which should never have rested on my girlhood. I think it had no inconsiderable share in fostering in me the habit of duplicity. Her husband was a moody, morose man, subject to spells of unnatural gayety. Living with him was like living on the rim of a smouldering volcano ready at any moment to belch forth. By the hour she would pour into my ears circumstantial details of her husband’s cruelties--it was like a thrilling continued story--then she would add, “But he’s different now--you mustn’t lay this up against him, and you mustn’t, for the world, let him see you mistrust him--Oh, Eugenie, don’t let him see a difference in you. Swear, swear to me you won’t!” And I would swear. And when we heard his step on the porch, we would begin to laugh and chatter in assumed gayety, disarming him of all suspicion. Many a time after such a recital, I have sat with them when it seemed as if I must scream out and tell him I knew just how base he had been; but I only went to the other extreme, becoming unusually gay and talkative, while the artful little wife would chime in and egg me on. I learned in watching her what a consummate artist in deception one can become; it was a revelation to see her coaxing, conciliating manner to the tyrant follow so closely her terrible disclosures to me. Happily, more wholesome influences were at work at the same time, counteracting somewhat these sombre ones. I think I received a certain intellectual stimulus from attending the debates of the lyceum to which Father belonged--eight or ten of the townsmen met for years every Saturday night in a lawyer’s office, debating in a spirited manner. Though women and girls seldom went, they were made welcome. The last year or two before leaving home I persuaded another girl to go with me. She went to please me rather than because she liked it. Father encouraged me in going. Although I really enjoyed the debates, I know that a part of my pleasure was because Laura and I were the only girls there. I liked the oddity of it, and was vain of the fact that I had a taste in that direction.