“The doctor came one morning and announced to me the death of my aunt, and placed a packet in my hand. It consisted of a half dozen newspapers, with certain passages marked in them. These passages related to the arrest, trial and execution of a guerrilla named Norse, alias Dipper, alias DOLE. It was stated that he had confessed to having committed nine highway robberies, seventeen successful burglaries, and five murders. With these papers there was a written manuscript and a note. The note was from the chaplain of the prison in which he was confined. It was addressed to Miss Pole. It explained that the accompanying manuscript was the attested confession of the prisoner. Justin, I have that document by me; would you like to look at it?” “Not now, dearest; I would rather you would tell me its contents. What did the dying culprit confess?” “First to having murdered ‘Madame Mona’ as my sister was called, for the sum of a thousand dollars, paid him for the service by the Signor Adriano di Bercelloni.” “Horrible!” “Then to various other offences which would have seemed like felonies, except by the side of that one enormous crime.” “You left the Parsonage soon after the receipt of that packet.” “Yes; I could not maintain my self-possession sufficiently well to make me serviceable in a sick room. So I hastened back to my regiment to lose the keen sense of sorrow in active military service.” “Oh, my dear Britomarte! your experience of men has indeed been very bitter!” “So bitter—so stringent, Justin, that it contracted and warped my judgment, until I attributed to your whole sex the follies and crimes that I had found only in the evil men immediately about me! And not only in my own generation, and in my sister’s life, but in the lives of my mother and my grandmother. Yes, Justin, it is true this strange chain of coincidences has run through many ages. If all the women of my race had been like me—proud, defiant, high-spirited, the phenomena might have been easily explained. It might have been said that they were a race of viragos who had nothing better to expect than misery in marriage. But this was not the case, at least with my immediate foremothers. No gentler women ever lived than were my mother and my grandmother.” “But Britomarte, those gentle women, by too deep a submission, ruin their domestic happiness as often as the high-spirited do by their resistance. Men are not gods, dear love, and so they are very often spoiled by women. But there is no danger of _your_ spoiling _me_ in that manner, dear Britomarte,” laughed Justin. “Indeed there is not,” she answered. “And for this reason—because _you_ would never abuse the power that the law gives you over the outer circumstances of your wife’s life, or that she herself gives you over the inner world of her affections.” “I think you do me justice, dear.”