From my hand I tore in anger That dear pledge, the wedding ring-- Swore that I would learn to hate him, But it is so weak a thing, This poor woman's heart, that, beating Heavily within my breast, Aches with jealous grief and anger, Tortured with a fierce unrest. MRS. ALEX. MCVEIGH MILLER. Most bitter were the reflections of the elegant villain, Clifford Standish, during the long night in his prison-cell. He knew too well that the charge against him was perfectly true, and that his boast to Geraldine that he would clear himself at court was absolutely false. Two years before, he had secretly married a piquant variety actress, of whom he had soon wearied, but from whose fetters he could not get free. Her life was absolutely irreproachable, and he could find no flaw in it on which to base an application for divorce. And all of his flagrant violations of faith, although known too well to his wife, did not goad her to seek release from him. She loved him, poor creature, with that dog-like devotion seen in some women of average intellect, who love the hand that smites them. She was romantic, and called it constancy; other women called it lack of spirit. She could not and did not comprehend the baseness of the man she loved. The end and aim of her poor, wrecked life was to win him back to the allegiance of which he had wearied so soon. Although she dared not disregard his injunction not to reveal their marriage, she followed him about as often as her engagements would permit, trying to keep track of his movements. When he was away from the city, she wrote him long love-letters, over which he laughed in heartless amusement. It was one of these letters that he had pretended to read to Geraldine on the bridge at Alderson, claiming that it contained news of Hawthorne's marriage. It was this woman who had prevented him from accompanying Geraldine to Newburgh, by threatening to reveal his fatal secret. At length, driven almost mad by his fiendish conduct, she had thrown caution to the winds, and caused his arrest on the stage that night for desertion. But she would have trembled with fear could she have heard his threats against her that night as he raged up and down his prison-cell, execrating her as the cause of his losing pretty Geraldine forever. "A few more hours and my peerless girl would have been mine, all mine! Oh, to miss happiness by so slight a chance, it is horrible, and dearly shall that woman pay for this!" he swore. But he knew that his wrath was futile, for she would have all the proofs of his conduct ready to cover him with shame in the morning. The morning found him sullen, bitter, desperate. The policemen said afterward that his eyes looked actually fiendish when he was placed in the Black Maria to be conveyed to the court-house in Chambers street.