"Clara, rouse yourself from this weak dream. Oh, where is your pride--your womanly pride--your self-respect? Is your life to be aimless and dreary because of an unrequited attachment? Shake it off! Rise above it! Destroy it! Oh, it makes the blood tingle in my veins to think of your wasting your energies and hopes in love for one who is so utterly indifferent to you. Much as I love you, Clara, had I the power to make you his wife to-morrow, I would rather see you borne to your grave. You know nothing of his fitful, moody nature; his tyrannical will. You could not be happy with him; you would see how utterly unsuited you are." "Are you acquainted with the circumstances of his early life and ill-fated marriage?" asked Clara, in a low, passionless tone. "No; he never alluded to his marriage in any way. Long as I lived in his house there was no mention of his wife's name, and I should never have known of his marriage but from his sister." "It was a most unhappy marriage," said Clara musingly. "So I conjectured from his studious avoidance of all allusion to it." "His wife was very, very beautiful; I saw her once when I was a child," continued Clara. "Of course she must have been, for he could not love one who was not." "She lived but a few months; yet even in that short time they had become utterly estranged, and she died of a broken heart. There is some mystery connected with it; they were separated." "Separated!" cried Beulah in amazement. "Yes, separated; she died in New Orleans, I believe." "And yet you profess to love him! A man who broke his wife's heart," said Beulah, with a touch of scorn. "No; you do his noble nature injustice. He is incapable of such a course. Even a censorious world acquitted him of unkindness." "And heaped contumely on the unhappy victim, eh?" rejoined Beulah. "Her conduct was not irreproachable, it has been whispered." "Aye, whispered by slanderous tongues! Not openly avowed, to admit of denial and refutation! I wonder the curse of Gomorrah does not descend on this gossiping, libelous community." "No one seems to know anything definite about the affair; though I have often heard it commented upon and wondered over." "Clara, let it be buried henceforth. Neither you nor I have any right to discuss and censure what neither of us know anything about. Dr. Hartwell has been my best and truest friend. I love and honor him; his faults are his own, and only his Maker has the right to balance his actions. Once for all, let the subject drop." Beulah compressed her lips with an expression which her companion very well understood. Soon after the latter withdrew, and, leaning her arms on the table near her, Beulah sank into a reverie which was far from pleasant. Dismissing the unsatisfactory theme of her guardian's idiosyncrasies, her thoughts immediately reverted to Eugene, and the revolution which five years had effected in his character.