This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

for him, but also in being deprived of the society of her mistress to whom she was becoming strongly attached.

Mr. Carleton soon found himself between two fires. He was obliged to conciliate the one and studiously avoid giving offence to the other, since only in maintaining his sway over their feelings and fears, could he hope to preserve, undisturbed by jealousy, the reverence and affections of his wife. His attentions to her in the meantime never waned, either in tenderness or devotion, manifested by the many little acts which would promote her comfort or increase her happiness.

Ten years passed by, ten years of agony to the hopeless slave from whose nightly couch arose earnest supplications for deliverance from the house of bondage; ten years of guilt and shame to the hardened master thus heaping upon himself tenfold more of retribution against the day of judgment; ten years of mingled joy and sorrow, hopes and fears, doubts and anxieties to the young wife, who, undisturbed by the gross violation of all the sanctities of humanity in the midst of which she lived, because sanctioned by existing laws and therefore must be endured, was then called to face the fearful chasm into which all that was dearest and best of her life's being had been cast.

Whatever misgivings she might have harbored concerning her husband's character were carefully locked within her own bosom, and he believed her still in ignorance, when, suffering from an attack of brain fever, some delirious expressions escaped her