He sat down and pulled her to his knee. "I esteem you, as I love you, above all the rest of your sex--above any other created mortal. I know you to be a pure, high-minded woman. When I part with this persuasion, may I part also with the life that doubt on this point would render wretched! Judge, then, whether it be possible for me to link this holy realization of womanhood with the thought of another character, which I will describe. I hold that she who enters the hallowed state of wedlock through motives of pecuniary interest, or ambition, or convenience--indeed, through any consideration save that of love, single and entire, for him to whom she pledges her vows, stands, in the sight of her Maker and the angels, on a level with the most abandoned outcast that pollutes the earth she treads. I shock you, I see; but on this subject I feel strongly. I have seen much, too much, of fashionable marriages formed for worldly aggrandizement--for riches; sometimes in pique at having lost a coveted lover. With my peculiar sentiments, I feel that I could endure no heavier curse than to contract an alliance like any of these. I repeat it, I believe in Woman as God made her and intended she should live, if for no other reason than because I recollect my mother, boy as I was when she died; and because I know and have you, my true, blessed wife!" CHAPTER XII. A year and five months had passed away since the evening when Lewis Hammond held his conscience-stricken wife upon his knee, and told her--in fervid words that singularly belied his calm and even demeanor at other times--of his faith in and love for her, and his abhorrence of the sin she felt in her trembling soul that she had committed. Yet she had not the superhuman courage required to contradict a trust like this. There was no alternative but to keep up the weary, wicked mockery. "But in all these months she must have learned to care for him!" cries Mrs. Common Sense. "There is nothing disagreeable about the man. He is not brilliant; yet he has intelligence and feeling, and is certainly attached to his wife. I have no doubt but that he indulges her in every reasonable request, and comports himself in all respects like an exemplary husband."