For the space of half an hour I had been an attentive but suffering listener to this wild raving. My pangs followed every sentence from her lips, believing, as I did, that they were reproachful of myself, and associated with a now unrestrained expression of passion for another. Gradually I had ceased, in the deep interest which I felt, to be conscious that Mrs. Delaney was present. I leaned across the couch; I bent my ear down toward the lips of the speaker, eager to drink up every feeble sound which might help to elucidate my doubts, and subdue or confirm my suspicions. Then, as the accumulating conviction formed itself, embodied and sharp, like a knife, into my soul, I groaned aloud, and my teeth were gnashed together in the bitterness of my emotion! In that moment I caught the keen gray eyes of my mother-in-law fixed upon me, with a jibing expression, which spoke volumes of mockery. They seemed to say, “Ah! you have it now! The truth is forced upon you at last! You can parry it no longer. I see the iron in your soul. I behold and enjoy your contortions!” Fiend language! She was something of a fiend! I started from the bedside, and just then a flood of tears came to the relief of my wife, and lessened the excitement of her brain. The tears relieved her. The paroxysm passed away. She turned her eyes upon me, and closed them involuntarily, while a deep crimson tint passed over her cheek, a blush, which seemed to me to confirm substantially the tenor of that language in which, while delirious, she had so constantly indulged. It did not lessen the seeming shame and dislike which her countenance appeared at once to embody, that a soft sweet smile was upon her lips at the same moment, and she extended to me her hand with an air of confidence which staggered and surprised me. “What is the matter, dear husband? And you here, mother? Have I been sick? Can it be?” “Hush!” said the mother. “You have been sick ever since the night of my marriage.” “Ah!” she exclaimed with an air of anxiety and pain, while pressing her hand upon her eyes, “Ah! that night!”