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From Chambers's Journal.
THE ANTE-NUPTIAL LIE.

PART I.

now stern; his manner was always reserved -it was now severe.

I had approached him naturally with smiling face and outstretched hand, anticipating his congratulations; but I stood still at once, as efficiently arrested as if he had held a drawn sword at my breast.

On the morning of my twenty-third birthday, I awoke early, and with a profound sense of happiness and thankfulness. My five years of married life, without having been a realized dream or sentimental idyl, had en- "That is right," he said; "come no closed the happiest and worthiest period of nearer!" Then, after a pause, he added, my existence. Tracing the details of it, I" You have been up some time; let us have rejoiced to think my worst difficulties were breakfast at once; " and he opened the door overcome, and that strong affection and deep- of the room for me to enter. I took my rooted esteem had changed an anxious course | place, and went through the accustomed of duty into blessedness and fruition.

forms without a word. I saw he wished me to eat and drink, and I did so, although the effort nearly choked me. Indeed, I was thankful for the few minutes' respite, and was striving to command my resources for the approaching conflict with all the strength of mind I possessed. I was not altogether ignorant of what had come upon me; there could be between us but that one point of disunion, that one cause of reproach; and surely, surely, neither God nor man could condemn me as without excuse upon that score !

My husband, Mr. Anstruther, had yielded to my earnest wish to celebrate our wedding anniversary in our country home, and had granted me just three days snatched from the toil of active parliamentary life, to taste my holiday; and I was tasting it slowly, but with intense enjoyment, as I stepped out that morning upon the dewy lawn, and devoured, with my aching London sight, one of the loveliest park-landscapes in England. I looked in the distance upon low ranges of hills, blue in the early misty light, and granting, here and there, peeps of the adjacent While I ate he walked deliberately up and sea, sleeping quietly beneath the rosy amber down the room, making no pretence to eat; of the eastern sky, and immediately at my and as soon as I had finished, he rang the feet upon flower-gardens planned and culti-bell to have the table cleared, and then sat vated with all the exigence of modern taste, down before it opposite to me. "We have and glowing with a hundred dyes. My mind friends asked to dinner to-day to celebrate recurred involuntarily to the narrow court the double anniversary of our marriage and in which my father's house was situated, and your birthday—have we not?" he said, to the dreary prospect of brick and mortar, leaning his arms heavily on the table, and of factory chimney and church steeple, which gazing steadily into my face. "I shall not for eighteen years had bounded my horizon; meet them. I fear it will be impossible for and if the recollection brought with it the me ever to recognize you as my wife again!" old inevitable association, I was able to thank I think he expected that the cruel abruptGod that now no pulse beat quicker, no trai-ness of this announcement would strike me torous thrill responded. swooning, or at least convicted, at his feet; How strange it seems that fate should come but it did not. My heart did for a moment upon us with such overwhelming sudden-seem to stand still, and every drop of blood ness, that we are not suffered to hear the ap- faded from my cheeks, but I did not tremble proaching footstep or see the outstretched or flinch under his hard scrutiny. I was arm, but are struck down instantly by the even able to speak. blow which might perhaps have been withstood, had a moment's warning been granted! I went back to the house that morning with the most absolute sense of security and hap- As I spoke, his face softened; I could piness; but on the threshold of the break- see, in spite of the iron mould of his physifast-room I met my husband, and the first ognomy, the instinctive hope, the passion. glance at his face told me something was ate yearning produced by my manner; it wrong. His face was always grave-it was was very evanescent, however, for almost

"Tell me at once," I said, "the meaning of this. You are under some delusion. What have I done?"

before I had gathered courage from the look, | a gesture of weariness; otherwise, he had it was gone, and all the hardness had re- sustained his part in the scene with a cold turned.

"I am not the man," he said, "to bring a premature or rash accusation especially against the woman I have made my wife. I accuse you of having deceived me, and here is the proof."

insensibility which seemed unnatural, and which filled me with the most dreadful foreboding of failure and misery. I did not misjudge him so far as to suppose for a moment that he was as insensible as he appeared, but I perceived that his tenacious and inflexible nature had been cut to the quick both in its intense pride and love, and that though the

He opened his pocket-book slowly, and took out a letter. I recognized it instantly, and my heart sank. I had sufficient self-wound bled inwardly-bled mortally, percommand to repress the cry that rose in- chance-he would never utter a cry, or even stinctively to my lips, but no effort could allow a pang. keep back the burning glow which dyed face and hands like conscious guilt.

My husband looked at me steadily, and his lip curled. "I will read the letter," he said.

The letter began thus: "You have told me again and again that you loved me; were those words a lie? You shall not make good your Moloch offering, and sacrifice religion and virtue, body and soul, youth and happiness, to your insatiate craving after position and wealth. This man is too good to be cajoled. What if I showed him the pledges of your love? taught him the reliance that is to be placed on your faith? Why should you reckon upon my submission to your perjury?"

The letter ran on to great length, mingling vehement reproaches with appeals and protestations of such unbridled passion, that as my husband read them his voice took a tone of deeper scorn, and his brow a heavier contraction.

Alas! alas! he would never forgive me. The concealment, the deception, as he would call it, which had appeared to me justifiable, would seem crime and outrage in his eyes. I lowered my head beneath his searching gaze, and remained silent.

"You have nothing to say?" he inquired, after a vain pause for me to speak. "You cannot deny that letter? God is my wit|ness," he said, solemnly, "that I wish to be a merciful judge. I may hold extreme views of a girl's folly, a woman's weakness: you would only be vain and faithless, like your sex, if you had played with this young man's feelings, and deceived his hopes. Is this your explanation ? "

It was a very snare of Satan offered for my fall-one easy lie, "I deceived him, but never you." And the way of forgiveness was open. I saw he was clinging to the hope with a concentrated eagerness it was impossible for him entirely to disguise. Oh! was it necessary for my punishment that the hard task should be made harder by that relenting glance ?

However he might judge me, I must stand clear before God and my conscience.

The letter was addressed to me, on the back of the same sheet on which it was written; it was not dated beyond "Tuesday I only hesitated for a moment; the discievening," but the postmark unusually legi- pline of the last five years had not left me ble, showed May 19, 1850-just three days so blind and weak as even in this supreme before we were married. My husband indi-emergency to reject truth for expediency. cated these facts with the same deliberation that had marked his conduct throughout, and then he said, "I found this letter last night in your dressing-room after you had left it; perhaps I ought not to have read it, but it would now be worse than mockery to make any excuses for so doing. I have nothing more to say until I have listened to your explanation. You tell me I am under a delusion-it will therefore be necessary for you to prove that this letter is a forgery." He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, and passed his hand over his forehead with

"No, Malcolm," I said desperately; "the truth is rather as it first appeared to you. I have been guilty in this matter, but my fault is surely one that you will consent to pardon; for even were it greater, I think our five years of happy union might turn the scale in my favor."

"Yes," he said; "you have borne with the difficulties of my temper with angelic patience, until the passion which induced me to marry you, despite of many obstacles, was

weakness in comparison with the love I had vices were too confirmed and tyrannous for for you yesterday. Only tell me I have even my influence-and it was great-to not been your dupe throughout-only,-" overcome. Then I gave him up. I thought He broke off abruptly. "I can bear no more the struggle would kill me, for my foolish fencing round the point," he said, harshly; soul clung to him desperately, but I could "one word is enough-did you love this not mate with drunkenness and dishonor. youth ?" My father, who had approved of our engage"I did from childhood, with all my heart ment, and who did not know or believe the and soul."

facts concerning him, upbraided and coerced me; Duncan himself, relying on my weakness, tried all the skill he had to move me, till I was nearly frantie in my misery.

"It was just at this crisis that you first saw me, visited my father's bookstore, and desired to be made known to me. What followed, I need not tell. You told me you loved me well enough to marry me, despite of social inferiority, if I thought I could love you in return-if I had a young girl's free heart to give you. You insisted upon this, Malcolm-I dare not deny it—and I came to you with a lie in my right hand! Here lies my offence, and God knows, I do not wish to palliate it; but before you utterly condemn me, consider the temptation. My father forbade Duncan the house, and threatened me if I dared to tell you the truth concerning him; but I hardly think that would have moved me, had I not persuaded myself also that I was justified in deceiving you. Had I told you I loved Duncan Forsyth, you would have given me up, and shut against me all the vague but glorious hopes such an alliance offered; but more than all, I knew this unworthy love must soon die out, and that my deep recognition and reverence for your goodness and excellence would end in an affection stronger and deeper than the weak passion of a girl. Before God, I vowed to do my duty; from that hour, I have striven, with his help, to keep my vow; and save in that preliminary falsehood, Malcolm, I have never wronged you."

I saw there was no hope for me in deprecation and irresolution; I must speak to the point, and decisively. "I have a right to be heard before I am condemned," I said, "and I claim my right. I confess I loved the youth who wrote that letter, but it would have been a miracle had it been otherwise. You know from what a life you rescued me: a prisoner in the dull rooms above my father's bookstore, without a pleasure, a friend, a hope in life. You were astonished at my proficiency in unusual studies: if at that time an active brain had not driven me to intellectual labor, I should have gone mad in the midst of my austere and desperate loneliness. I was scarcely fifteen when Duncan Forsyth, a kinsman of my father, came to study medicine in our city university, and to live as boarder in our house. I say it was inevitable that such a connection should in due course ripen into love. He was young, gifted, and attractive, but it would have needed but half his endowments to win my heart then. I was nothing but a blind, passionate child, neglected utterly till he flattered, caressed, and wooed me. I think he loved me with all the faculty of love he had, and for a time we were very happy. To me it was a delicious dream-phrase seemed to overthrow it again. Have patience with me, Malcolm; I must tell all the truth. My dream, at least, was brief enough; I soon awoke to discover, it little matters how, that the lover I was canonizing in my imagination, as the type of heroic virtue, was unworthy. For awhile, I would not believe; when conviction became inevitable, I clung desperately to the forlorn hope of reform. It was in vain; his

My husband had recovered his self-command while I was speaking, but the last

"Wronged me!" he repeated, and the intonation quiet as it was, thrilled me like physical pain, it was so hard and unrelenting. "I wish to be calm, Ellinor," he continued, "and therefore I will speak briefly. You seem to think you have extenuated yourself by your confession. To my heart and mind, you are condemned past forgiveness. Nay, do not plead or protest," he