He sought first deliberately to break her heart, to kill her without violence, by the action of her own outraged affections—and then, when that failed, or rather when he saw that the process must needs be too slow to meet his accursed views, he aimed at driving her to commit suicide—thus slaying, should he succeed in his hellish scheme, body and soul together of the woman whom he had sworn before God’s holy altar, with the most solemn adjuration, to love, comfort, honor, and keep in sickness and in health—the woman whose whole heart and soul were his absolute possession; who had never formed a wish, or entertained a thought, but to love him and to make him happy. And this—this was her reward. Could she, indeed, have fully conceived the extent of the feelings which he now entertained toward her, could she have believed that he really was desirous of her death, was actually plotting how he might bring it about, without dipping his hand in her blood, or calling down the guilt of downright murder on his soul, I believe he would have been spared all further wickedness. To have known that he felt toward her not merely casual irritation, that his conduct was not the effect of a bad disposition, or of an evil temper only, but that determined hatred had supplanted the last spark of love in his soul, and that he was possessed by a resolution to rid himself of the restraint which his marriage had brought upon him, by one means or another—to have known this, I say, would have so frozen her young blood, would have so stricken her to the heart, that, if it had not slain her outright, it would have left her surely—perhaps happier even to be such—a maniac for the poor remnant of her life. That morning, at an early hour, he had ridden forth, with two or three dogs at his heel, and the game-keeper, James Alderly, better known in that neighborhood as Black Jem, who had of late been his constant companion, following him. Dinner-time had passed—supper-time—yet he came not; and the deserted creature was yet watching wistfully, hopefully for his return. Suddenly, far off among the stems of the distant trees, she caught a glimpse of a moving object; it approached; it grew more distinct—it was he, returning at a gallop, as he seldom now returned to his distasteful home, with his dogs careering merrily along by his side, and the grim-visaged keeper spurring in vain to keep up with the furious speed at which he rode, far in the rear of his master. She pressed her hand upon her heart, and drew a long, deep breath. “Once more,” she murmured to herself, “he hath come back to me once more!” And then the hope flashed upon her mind that the changed pace at which he rode, and something which even at that distance she could descry in his air and mien, might indicate an alteration in his feelings. “Yes, yes! Great God! can it be? He sees me, he waves his hand to me. He loves—he loves me once again!”