Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/26

 “IN THE BITTER conn.”

Andersen, is to marry your old flame, Julia Melville—so goes the world. They say you married to annoy her—is she returning the compliment?

The sheet fell from her hand—this was the cause of Mr. Hope’s agitation—he had left the house in order to conceal his suffering.

“What right had he to marry me?” she exclaimed, indignantly. “Then it was to revenge himself upon that girl—cowardly traitor!—and I have loved this man.’

When her husband. entered the chamber late in the evening she seemed asleep, for he addressed her and she returned no answer. But all night long she lay listening to his irregular breathing, and many times caught a low sigh, which proved that he was wakeful as herself.

The next morning Mr. Hope rose early, and when Margaret woke from the uneasy slumber into which she had fallen after daybreak, he was standing by the bedside in a traveling dress.

“I am obliged to leave town for a few days, Margaret,” he said; “the business is urgent, and I knew nothing of it until last night.”

That letter was the cause of this sudden journey—Margaret felt certain of it, and her grief gave way to a sort of stony indignation.

“If you are going at once I will not rise,” she said, coldly, and when he kissed her farewell, her lips returned no kindly pressure. Mr. Hope paused at the door and looked back—he seemed about to speak, then checking himself, regarded his wife fixedly for an instant, and with a sorrowful gesture passed out of the room.

All that day Margaret was alone, and in a state of excitement which was little less than insanity. She was convinced that her husband had loved Miss Melville, and that ins moment of anger he had married another. The weight of obligation which had always weighed heavily on Margaret’s soul could no longer be borne.

There was only one thing to be done—she must go away forever. She would not remain. under that roof which could never again be a home to her. Let her husband be happy if he could; and she felt a bitter satisfaction at her own desolation.

She had in her possession a few hundred dollars, realized from the sale of some valuables, which Mr. Hope had insisted upon her retaining as her own; that little pittance would serve; anything, beggary itself, would be more endurable than that luxurious home.

On the evening of that terrible day, Margaret Hope stole out from the shelter of ber husband’s roof, and with those two helpless children went forth into the wide world.

Three days after, Mr. Hope returned home and found the place desolate. He could obtain no clue to his wife’s departure—the only trace of her was a note upon his dressing-table.

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“I have left your house forever; henceforth we must be as dead to one another. Do not search for me, it would be in vain. Be happy in your own way, and forget even the existence of MARGARET.”

He sank into a seat completely unmanned by a blow so unexpected and terrible. Beside Margaret’s note lay a folded paper which he opened eagerly—it was the letter that contained the allusion to Miss Melville’s former engagement with himself.

A perception of the truth dawned upon him; that letter, or some exaggerated and untruthful account, had been the cause of Margaret’s leaving his house.

How much unhappiness a false, artful woman had wrought for him. He had met Miss Melville several years before, while he was a very young man, and had been fascinated by her beauty and manner. ° She was a bold, unscrupulous woman, who had passed beyond her girlhood, and had left there every relic of youth or enthusiasm. Cold and designing, she determined from the first to secure so rich a prize as Mr. Hope, and she nearly succeeded. Fortunately for him, circumstances disclosed her treachery before he had gone too far to retreat, and he left her forever.

Several years passed before he even again thought of love, and when he met Margaret Foster, with her pale, still loveliness, and her sby, proud manner, it was a new revelation of the sex to him. He loved her devotedly, and it was that feeling only which prompted him to make her his wife.

Mr. Hope had one serious fault which had aided much in bringing upon him that great misery—he never confided to any his real feelings. Brought up by a stern, harsh father, who looked upon any outbreak of enthusiasm as an actual crime, and regarded an imaginative child much in the same light as our forefathers did those possessed of a devil, Arthur had learned to appear cold and unsympathizing, though he had a kind heart, full of generous impulses and feelings. And so, even in his affection, Arthur Hope could not be demonstrative. When the thousand tender follies of a lover rose to his lips, his father’s bitter laugh seemed ringing in his ear to check them; when in oonversation he would have indulged in the fanciful theories and comparisons peculiar to an imaginative mind, the recollection of the biting sarcasm which of