A tone of sadness now marked the features of my wife. There was an expression of anxiety in her countenance, which, amid all her previous sufferings, I had never seen there before. She did not complain; but sometimes, when we sat alone together, I reading, perhaps, and she sewing, she would drop her work in her lap, and sigh suddenly and deeply, as if the first shadows of the upgathering gloom were beginning to cloud her young and innocent spirit, and force her apprehensions into utterance. This did not escape me, but I read its signification, as witches are said to read the Bible, backward. A gloomier fancy filled my brain as I heard her unconscious sigh. “It is the language of regret. She laments our marriage. She could have found another, surely, who could have made her happier. Perhaps, had Edgerton and herself known each other intimately before!--” Dark, perverse imagining! It crushed me. I felt, I can not tell, what bitterness. Let no one suppose that I endured less misery than I inflicted. The miseries of the damned could not have exceeded mine in some of the moments when these cruel conjectures filled my mind. Then followed some such proofs as these of the presence of the Evil One:-- “You sigh, Julia. You are unhappy.” “Unhappy? no, dear Edward, not unhappy! What makes you think so?” “What makes you sigh, then?” “I do not know. I am certainly not unhappy. Did I sigh, Edward?” “Yes, and seemingly from the very bottom of your heart. I fear, Julia, that you are not happy; nay, I am sure you are not! I feel that I am not the man to make you happy. I am a perverse--” “'Nay, Edward, now you speak so strangely, and your brow is stern, and your tones tremble! What can it be afflicts you? You are angry at something, dear Edward. Surely, it can not be with me.” “And if it were, Julia, I am afraid it would give you little concern.” “Now, Edward, you are cruel. You do me wrong. You do yourself wrong. Why should you suppose that it would give me little concern to see you angry? So far from this, I should regard it as the greatest misery which I had to suffer. Do not speak so, dearest Edward--do not fancy such things. Believe me, my husband, when I tell you that I know nothing half so dear to me as your love--nothing that I would not sacrifice with a pleasure, to secure, to preserve THAT!” “Ah! would you give up painting?” “Painting! that were a small sacrifice! I worked at it only because you used to like it.” “What, you think I do not like it now?” “I KNOW you do not.” “But you paint still?” “No! I have not handled brush or pencil for a week. Mr. Edgerton was reproaching me only yesterday for my neglect.” “Ah, indeed! Well, you promised him to resume, did you not? He is a rare persuader! He is so amiable, so mild--you could not well resist.”