“Calm! deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But I am not mad now. I will tell you what it means. It means that, in taking captive Alfred Stevens--in winning a lover--securing that pious young man--there was some difficulty, some peril. Would you believe it?--there were some privileges which he claimed. He took me in his arms. Ha! ha! He held me panting to his breast. His mouth filled mine with kisses--” “No more, do not say more, my child!” “Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you--then came blindness and madness, and I was dishonored--made a woman before I was made a wife! Ruined, lost, abused, despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha! no marriage ceremony. Though I went to the church. No bridegroom there, though he promised to come. Preacher, church, bride, all present, yet no wedding. Ha! ha! ha! How do I know!--Good reason for it, good reason--Ha! ha!--ah!” The paroxysm, terminated in a convulsion. The unhappy girl fell to the floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood gushed from her mouth and nostrils, and she lay insensible in the presence of the terrified and miserable mother. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE FATES FIND THE DAGGER AND THE BOWL. For a long time she lay without showing any signs of life. Her passions rebelled against the restraint which her mind had endeavored to put upon them. Their concentrated force breaking all bonds, so suddenly, was like the terrific outburst of the boiling lava from the gorges of the frozen mountain. Believing her dead, the mother rushed headlong into the highway, rending the village with her screams. She was for the time a perfect madwoman. The neighbors gathered to her assistance. That much-abused woman, the widow Thackeray, was the first to come. Never was woman's tenderness more remarkable than hers--never was woman's watch by the bed of sickness and suffering--that watch which woman alone knows so well how to keep--more rigidly maintained than by her! From the first hour of that agony under which Margaret Cooper fell to earth insensible, to the last moment in which her recovery was doubtful, that widow Thackeray--whose passion for a husband had been described by Mrs. Cooper as so very decided and evident--maintained her place by the sick bed of the stricken girl with all the affection of a mother. Widow Thackeray was a woman who could laugh merrily, but she could shed tears with equal readiness. These were equally the signs of prompt feeling and nice susceptibility; and the proud Margaret, and her invidious mother, were both humbled by that spontaneous kindness for which, hitherto, they had given the possessor so very little credit, and to which they were now equally so greatly indebted.