was; she knew no interval of loving for the brute fiend who mocked her
with the name of husband; no change or chance could alienate her divine
tenderness,--even as the pitiful blue sky above hangs stainless over
reeking battle-fields and pest-smitten cities, piercing with its sad and
holy star-eyes down into the hellish orgies of men, untouched and
unchanged by just or unjust, forever shining and forever pure. But honor
him! could that be done? What respect or trust was it possible to keep
for a self-degraded man like that? And where honor goes down, obedience
is sucked into the vortex, and the wreck flies far over the lonely sea,
historic and prophetic to ship and shore.

No! there was nothing to do! her vow was taken, past the power of man to
break; nothing now remained but endurance. Perhaps another woman, with a
strong will and vivid intellect, might have set herself to work, backed
by that very vow that defied poor Hitty, and, by sheer resolution, have
dragged her husband up from the gulf and saved him, though as by fire;
or a more buoyant and younger wife might have passed it by as a first
offence, hopeful of its being also the only one. But an instinctive
knowledge of the man bereft Hitty of any such hope; she knew it was not
the first time; from his own revelations and penitent confessions while
she was yet free, she knew he had sinned as well as suffered, and the
past augured the future. Nothing was left her, she could not escape, she
must shut her eyes and her mouth, and only keep out of his way as far as
she could. So she clasped her child more tightly, and, closing her heavy
eyes, rocked back and forth till the half-waked boy slept again; and
there old Keery found her mistress, in the morning, white as the cold
drifts without, and a depth of settled agony in her quiet eyes that
dimmed the old woman's only to look at.

Neither spoke; nor when her husband strode into the breakfast-room and