The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

our new lives. You don’t know how he has used me. And yet you ought to know, for you saw how he used me today. You heard him sneer at my presuming to be scrupulous⁠—you heard him say I had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him.” She sat down again, her face flushed deeply, and her hands twisted and twined together in her lap. “I can’t tell you about it now,” she said; “I shall burst out crying if I tell you now⁠—later, Marian, when I am more sure of myself. My poor head aches, darling⁠—aches, aches, aches. Where is your smelling-bottle? Let me talk to you about yourself. I wish I had given him my signature, for your sake. Shall I give it to him tomorrow? I would rather compromise myself than compromise you. After your taking my part against him, he will lay all the blame on you if I refuse again. What shall we do? Oh, for a friend to help us and advise us!⁠—a friend we could really trust!” She sighed bitterly. I saw in her face that she was thinking of Hartright⁠—saw it the more plainly because her last words set me thinking of him too. In six months only from her marriage we wanted the faithful service he had offered to us in his farewell words. How little I once thought that we should ever want it at all! “We must do what we can to help ourselves,” I said. “Let us try to talk it over calmly, Laura⁠—let us do all in our power to decide for the best.” Putting what she knew of her husband’s embarrassments and what I had heard of his conversation with the lawyer together, we arrived necessarily at the conclusion that the parchment in the library had been drawn up for the