him in a moment helpless as a babe, and dependent on herself for everything. She must attend to his every want, and manage the farm and his business for him. By a stroke, their relative positions were reversed. The wedding night had produced a revolution in their places of which she could not have dreamed. She felt at once the burden of the responsibilities that came upon her. She was called upon by those on the farm to order and provide for everything connected with it. She had to think for the farm, and think for the master into whose position she had forced her way.
She hated herself for her rash act. She hated the man whom she had mutilated, but more herself. If by what she had done she had in one sense made herself master, in another she had cast herself into bondage. By the terrible injury she had inflicted on Rebow she had morally bound herself to him for life to repair that injury by self-devotion. Had it been possible for her to love him, even to like him, this would have been light to her, with her feminine instinct, but as it was not possible, the slavery would be inexpressibly painful.
Love will hallow and lighten the most repulsive labours, the most extreme self-sacrifice, but when there is no love, only abhorrence, labour and self-sacrifice crush mentally and morally. She must bear the most fierce and insulting reproaches without an attempt to escape them, she had in part deserved them. These she could and would endure, but his caresses!—no! however deeply she might have sinned against him, however overflowing her pity for his helpless condition might be, she could not tolerate affection from the man who by his own confession merited her profound loathing. He had taken an unoffending man, and had imprisoned him and blinded his reason by cruelty; it seemed to her as if Providence had used her hand to exact a just retribution on Rebow by condemning him to an equally miserable condition. The recompense was justly meted, but would that it had been dealt by another hand!
In one particular she was blameless, and able to excuse herself. She had acted without intent to do bodily harm, and in ignorance of the weapon she had used. She had
