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Anna made no reply, but turned half away from him, evidently to conceal the tears that suddenly started from her eyes, and strove more earnestly to quiet the child. In this she soon succeeded.

“I believe you let her cry on purpose, whenever I am in the house, just to annoy me,” her husband resumed in an ill-natured tone.

“No, Thomas, you know that I do not,” Anna said.

“Say I lie, why don’t you?”

“Oh, Thomas, how can you speak so to me?” And his young wife turned toward him an earnest, tearful look.

“Pah! don’t try to melt me with your crying. I never believed in it. Women can cry at any moment.”

There was a convulsive motion of Mrs. Elliott’s head as she turned quickly away, and a choking sound in her throat. She remained silent, ten minutes passed, when her husband said in a firm voice,

“Anna, I’m going to break up.”

Mrs. Elliott glanced around with a startled air.

“It’s true, just what I say–your father may think that I’m going to make a slave of myself to support you, but he’s mistaken. He’s refused to help me in my business one single copper, though he’s able enough. And now I’ve taken my resolution. You can go back to him as quick as you like.”

Before the brutal husband had half finished the sentence, his wife was on her feet, with a cheek deadly pale, and eyes almost starting from her head. Thomas Elliott was her husband and the father of her babe, and as such she had loved him with a far deeper love than he had deserved. This had caused her to bear with coldness and neglect, and even positive unkindness without a complaint. Sacredly had she kept from her mother even a hint of the truth. Thus had she gone on almost from the first; for only a few months elapsed before she discovered that her image was dim on her husband’s heart.

“You needn’t stand there staring at me like one moon-struck”–he said, with bitter sarcasm and a curl of the lip. “What I say is the truth. I’m going to give up, and you’ve got to go home to them that are more able to support you than I am; and who have a better right, too, I’m thinking.”

There was something so heartless and chilling in the words and manner of her husband, that Mrs. Elliott made no attempt to reply. Covering her face with her hands, she sunk back into the chair from which she had risen, more deeply miserable than she had ever been in her life. From this state she was aroused by the imperative question,

“Anna, what do you intend doing?”

“That is for you to say”–was her murmured reply.

“Then, I say, go home to your father, and at once.”

Without a word the wife rose from her chair, with her infant in her arms, and pausing only long enough to put on her shawl and bonnet, left the house.

Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were sitting alone late on the afternoon of the same day, thinking about and conversing of their child. Neither of them felt too well satisfied with the result of her marriage. It required not even the close observation of a parent’s eye, to discover that she was far from happy.

“I wish she were only single”–Mr. Wyman at length said. “She married much too young–only eighteen now, and with a cold-hearted and, I fear, unprincipled and neglectful husband. It is sad to think of it.”

“But I was married as young as she was, Mr. Wyman?”

“Yes; but I flatter myself you made a better choice. Your condition at eighteen was very different from what hers is now. As I said before, I only wish she were single, and then I wouldn’t care to see her married for two or three years to come.”

“I can’t help wishing she had refused Mr. Elliott. If she had done so, she might have been married to a much better man long before this. Mr. Carpenter is worth a dozen of him. Oh dear! this marriage is all a lottery, after all. Few prizes and many blanks. Poor Anna! she is not happy.”

At this moment the door opened, and the child of whom they were speaking, with her infant in her arms, came hurriedly in. Her face was deadly pale, her lips tightly compressed, and her eyes widely distended and fixed.

“Anna!” exclaimed the mother, starting up quickly and springing toward her.

“My child, what ails you?” was eagerly asked by the father, as he, too, rose up hastily.

But there was no reply. The heart of the child was too full. She could not utter the truth. She had been sent back to her parents by her husband, but her tongue could not declare that! Pride, shame, wounded affections, combined to hold back her words. Her only reply was to lay her babe in her mother’s arms, and then fling herself upon the bosom of her father.

All was mystery then, but time soon unveiled the cause of their daughter’s strange and sudden appearance, and her deep anguish. The truth gradually came out that she had been deserted by her husband; or, what seemed to Mrs. Wyman more disgraceful still, had been sent home by him. Bitterly did she execrate him, but it availed nothing. Her ardent wish had been gratified. Anna was engaged at sixteen, and married soon after; but at eighteen, alas! she had come home a deserted wife and mother! And so she remained. Her husband never afterward came near her. And now, at thirty, with a daughter well grown, she remains in her father’s house, a quiet, thoughtful, dreamy woman, who sees little in life that is attractive, and who rarely stirs beyond the threshold of the house that shelters her. There are those who will recognise this picture.

So much for being engaged at sixteen!