One says: "You, a poor hasty girl, very weak yet innocent, ought to have remained in the slough, losing day by day your purity, your worth, your nobleness, till you grew like your companions. You had vowed ignorantly, with a profound ignorance it might be, to obey and honor this man till death parted you. You had no right to break that vow." Another says: "You should have made of yourself a spy, you should have laid traps; you should have gathered up every scrap of evidence you could find against them, that might have freed you in a court of law." A third says: "It was right for you, for the health of your soul, and the deliverance of your whole self from an intolerable bondage, to break the ignorantly-taken vow, and take refuge in flight. No soul can be bound irrevocably to another for its own hurt and ruin." I listened then, as I should listen now, to the third voice. The chance came to me just before I was one-and-twenty. They were bent upon extorting from me that portion of my father's property which would come to me, and be solely in my own power, when I came of age. It had been settled upon me in such a way, that if I were married my husband could not touch it without my consent. I must make this quite clear. One-third, of my fortune was so settled that I myself could not take any portion of it save the interest; but the other two-thirds were absolutely mine, whether I was married or single. By locking up one-third, my father had sought to provide against the possibility of my ever being reduced to poverty. The rest was my own, to keep if I pleased; to give up to my husband if I pleased. At first they tried what fair words and flattery would do with me. Then they changed their tactics. They brought me over to London, where not a creature knew me. They made me a prisoner in dull, dreary rooms, where I had no employment and no resources. That is, the woman did it. My husband, after settling us in a house in London, disappeared, and I saw no more of him. I know now he wished to keep himself irresponsible for my imprisonment. She would have been the scape-goat, had any legal difficulties arisen. He was anxious to retain all his rights over me. I can see how subtle he was. Though my life was a daily torture, there was positively nothing I could put into words against him--nothing that would have authorized me to seek a legal separation. I did not know any thing of the laws, how should I? except the fact which he dinned into my ears that he could compel me to live with him. But I know now that the best friends in the world could not have saved me from him in any other way than the one I took. He kept within the letter of the law. He forfeited no atom of his claim upon me. Then God took me by the hand, and led me into a peaceful and untroubled refuge, until I had gathered strength again. CHAPTER THE SECOND. ON THE WING AGAIN.