Page:The New Penelope.djvu/56

 used every possible means of intimidation, except actual corporeal punishment. That he threatened long after; and I told him if he ever laid a finger on me, I should certainly shoot him dead. But we had not come to that yet."

"Long after!" I repeated. "You do not, you cannot mean that this wretch continued to live under the same roof with you, long after he knew that you would never acknowledge him as your husband?"

"Yes, for years! For years after he knew that I knew he was what he was, he lived in my house and took my earnings; yes, and ordered me about and insulted me as much as he liked."

"But," I said, "I cannot understand such a condition of things. Was there no law in the land? no succor in the society about you? How could other women hold still, and know that a young creature like you was being tortured in that way?"

"The inertia of women in each other's defense is immense," returned Mrs. Greyfield, in her most incisive tone. "You must not forget that Portland was then almost a wilderness, and families were few, and often 'far between.' Among the few, my acquaintances were still fewer; for I had come among them poor and alone, and with all I could do to support myself, without time or disposition to visit. The peculiar circumstances I have related to you broke my spirit and inclined me to seclusion. However, I did carry my evidence, and my story together, to two or three women that I knew, and what do you suppose they said? That I 'should have thought of all that before I married!' They treated it exactly as if, having gone through the marriage ceremony, I was bound, no matter how many wives Mr. Seabrook had back in Ohio."

"They could not have believed your story," I said; not being able to take in such inferior morality.

"What they believed I do not know: what they said I have told you. I incline to the opinion that they thought