Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/30

 Thus conclusively did Mr. L succeed in extricating himself from the amorous thraldom in which she held him too long her slave, and, to the great joy of his family and friends, returned to his domestic duties. The heroine of this eventful drama does not hold us long in suspense, for in no prolonged period of time the scene shifts to, and we find her commencing the next art in Pittsberg, with captivating the affections of a wealthy blacksmith, who was also the proprietor of an extensive range of livery-stables. There again, she by her artful management of, and seductive power over his will, through her wiley machinations effected another matrimonial separation.

All her whole force of bad qualities, of basely vitiated principles, and most vilely vindictive feelings were called into action to support and carry into full effective operation her infamous purposes. Having once inveigled and caught him in the magic sphere of her attractive influence, she spared no exertion of her demoniacal malevolence, no means howsoever black in villainy, or assertion, though false at hell's deep guilt could make it, to bias, infect and poison his mind against his wife, the virtuous partner of his bosom; to excite his anger and provoke his hatred, till she (the blacksmith's wife,) felt too often the painful effects of the ire Rachel's malignity had engendered against her in corporeal suffering inflicted upon her by the hand of her husband, in the knowledge of which, most unnaturally brutal as it must seem, Rachel received not only a secret delight, but would, also, often express her pleasure by her approval of the deed:

He was so altogether the slave of her beauty, was so completely bewildered by the magic of her personal charms, and yielded his subdued reason so unreservedly to the entire government of her will, that he could neither think or act but as she influenced and directed. He became so decidedly the instrument of her designs and the obedient agent of her profligate commands, that she led him into every species of prodigal waste and sensual debauchery.