Sold! bartered! the object of a contemptuous huxtering to the purchaser and the seller; sold, too, with a lie that debased her at once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with scorn. Robbed already of the name and honour of a wife, and transferred, as a harlot, from the wearied arms of one leman, to the capricious caresses of another. Such was the image that rose before her; and while it roused at one moment all her fiercer passions into madness, humbled, with the next, her vanity into the dust. She who knew the ruling passion of Welford, saw, at a glance, the object of scorn and derision which she had become to him. While she imagined herself the betrayer, she had been the betrayed; she saw vividly, before her (and shuddered as she saw) her husband's icy smile—his serpent eye—his features steeped in sarcasm, and all his mocking soul stamped upon the countenance, whose lightest derision was so galling. She turned from this picture, and saw the courtly face of the purchaser—his subdued smile at her reproaches—his latent sneer at her claims to a station which he had been taught, by the arch plotter, to believe she had never possessed. She saw his early weariness
