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Let us leave Margaret for a little
while, and return to Stanley Burke.

When that gentleman left Harry in his
room, and went down the dark stairway,
there was no light to reveal the peculiar
expression of his face; but, as he passed
along Broadway, walking rapidly through
its crowd, his velvet-lined cloak dangling
from one shoulder, and brought under
his left arm, the gas-light shone fully
upon him, and in spite of the shadow of
his down-drawn hat, lit up his visage,
and showed the peculiar look in palpable
hideousness.

The tightly compressed lips, the small
eyes glittering beneath the knit brows,
the expanded nostrils, and broad, low
forehead, covered with sudden wrinkles,
all revealed the singular agitation which
now moved the man.

And now and then the gentleman
would smile—such a smile! It lit up
his high cheek-bones into a flush, gave
a fiercer twinkle to his small eyes, and
showed his white teeth in ghastlier
whiteness—(Burke, like Dickens' Carker,
had white teeth, but he was totally
a different man from Carker, and we
didn't steal the teeth from Dickens)—
and even suffused his broad low forehead
with its sinister glow.

What was the man thinking about?

Why had he inveigled Harry Morgan
to his room?

Why filled the honest mechanic with
the falsehood that Margaret and her
mother lived in the house of which his
room was a part?

Had he designs upon Harry, and if he
had designs upon Harry and his well-filled
trunks, how did he intend to carry
them out?

Grave questions and full of meaning;
but, as we cannot look into the heart of
Stanley Burke, and note clearly the
emotions that grapple there, it is not
possible to answer them. The truth is,
Stanley, having seen Harry and his
trunks safely lodged in his room, had
come forth to take the fresh air, and to
think.

It might have frightened you to have
seen his thoughts, could they have taken
palpable shape. And while he goes up
Broadway, unconscious of the crowd
through which he passes, now scowling
and now smiling, now twirling his gold
en chain, and now drawing his cloak
closer round him, let us take a glimpse
at the real character of Stanley Burke.

He was a character. It is a great
mistake to suppose that there are no
savages but those who go naked and paint
their faces, and eat their slain. Broadcloth
drapes many a savage, fiercer and
more completely infernal than any that
ever sat down to a cannibal feast in the
wilds of Van Dieman's Land.

The externals of a gentleman, fine apparel,
the graces of education, may mask
the real nature of such a savage, but
still, at heart, he is more remorseless—
more completely defiant of all the ties
which bind man to man and humanity
to God than his tatooed brother of the
war-club and jungle.

Stanley Burke was a man of the world
in the intensest form.

To live well, to gratify all his appetites,
without one effort of honest work,
of hand or brain, and without coming
within the reach of the iron hand of the
law, was the religion of his life.

For years he had made money, and
much of it, in various ways, and always
kept up a good appearance, and yet
somehow, he was always in want of
money. To say that he was a gambler
would but poorly describe him.

All men of the world are gamblers, in
some sense or other—at faro, in stocks,
in trade, in their own reputation, or in
the reputation of other people—but the
mere gambler at cards is the smallest of
his tribe; he only injures and affects a
very silly and limited class.

The man is dangerous who, to the
character of a gambler—a lottery broker
of chance and huckster of destiny—adds
other qualities, which mask and ornament
his real nature. Stanley Burke
was such a man.

For years he had lived well, appeared
in elegant plumage, kept the company of
that genteel class who, polluted with the
moral assassination of womanhood, are
yet received with the best society—but
where the means came from, was a secret
known only to a few.

Stanley had gambled at faro and at
bank-stock. He had lived by turns in
all the large cities of the Union. Now,
he was (or seemed to be) a cotton broker
in New-Orleans; now, a fancy stock
man in Wall-street; now, a planter in

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Charleston; now, a commission merchant
in Cincinnati; now, a gentleman of leisure
in Washington; but he always
made money, and was always in want of
money.

He had seen every phase of the savage
life, which is but poorly hidden by the
glittering tinsel-cloak of large city civilization,
and that life had taken possession
of him, and moulded him in every fibre.

It was this man who now walked
Broadway—thinking—and Henry Morgan
and his well-filled trunks were the
matters which occupied his thoughts.
Thus occupied he reached Union-square,
and pausing for a moment, looked up to
the leaden sky.

“It may be a good plan”—he muttered,
as if speaking of some secret purpose—
“and it may not! Anyhow, the
opportunity is golden, and I must not
let it slip. And I must decide upon it
anyhow, before I return to my room and
confront Morgan.”

And he smiled, and his small dark
eyes emitted a light that was not pleasant
to look upon, as he—for the moment
forgetting his usual composed demeanor—
raised his clenched hand to the darkened
sky.

“To my room—the plan is good; or,
if it won't do, I must and can find a better—
to my room, and confront Morgan.”

He little deemed that Morgan was no
longer in his room, but far away in a
far different apartment.

Return we to the miserable home of
Margaret, where she bends over her
babe, her tears moistening the pillow on
which it rests.

“My God!” was the exclamation,
often repeated—wrung from a heart torn
by its agony—“My God! Why did I
not tell him all?”

And, rising, she held the candle over
the face of the babe, and looked at it,
with a look most strange to see upon a
woman's face—remorseless hate and
yearning love were in her straining eyes.
A part of her being— the blossom of her
life—it slumbered there, and yet it was
the external symbol of a fact, which, but
to think upon, made her existence a hell.

Sad mother! Innocent child! There
is a blot upon your life, mother, which
cannot be washed away—a future before
you, child, that has no ray of hope upon
its darkened brow.

Margaret went into the next room,
placed the candle on the table, and sat
down in the chair, where Harry had
lately sat, and folding her hands on her
knees—her foot moving nervously all the
while—gazed at the blank wall with
great glaring eyes. But she did not see
the wall—the word “to-morrow!” seemed
painted on the air, even as it was
stamped upon her brain—“to-morrow!”

She saw, or seemed to see, this word
quivering there in letters of fire; and it
held her gaze, or if she turned her eyes
away, it was still before her.

“To-morrow! How shall I meet
him! How shall I tell him all! How
tell him that the woman he loves—his
wife—who promised to be true to him
while living and to his memory when
dead—who, to-night, saw him start up
as if from the grave, and hang upon his
breast as in other days—that she is—”

Her lips could not speak the word,
but she put both hands over her eyes at
the very thought.

And the light of the candle fell upon
the bare department, and upon the woman,
who sat trembling there, the very
embodiment of hopeless misery.

All at once the door opens, and a form
appears on the threshold. It is Harry
come back! Margaret starts up at the
thought; but, when she sees the face of
the intruder, sits down again, and
crouches against the wall, as though he
were some savage animal.

“Well, wife! you see I've come!”

It was Mr. Stanley Burke who spoke.

“Wife!” she echoed, and crouched
closer to the wall. “Yesterday I found
you out, and told you I'd come to see
you to-night,” continued the gentleman,
dropping into a chair. “D—n the
place, how cold it is!” and he drew his
velvet-lined cloak closer around his
shoulders. “You don't seem glad to see
me? Here's a sweet, dear huzzy of a
wife, who runs away from a husband,
hides herself from him for six months or
more, and when he finds her out and
comes to see her, meets him with the
look of an enraged cat that would like to
bite, but—is afraid!”

Margaret made no reply, but crouching
closer to the wall, looked at him over
her shoulder; her eyes alone seemed
living in her face.

Don't be surprised at Stanley's rough

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language. The man who can bow the
lowest on Broadway, and show his teeth
in the blandest manner, is very often
the same man who, within four walls,
insults, taunts—sometimes beats—a defenceless
woman.

Do not believe all that you see in
Broadway, or at the opera, or at a pleasant
social party; behind all these, there
is a dark background of homes whose
secrets would appall you, whose miseries
would strike you dumb.

“There we were, the very models of
perfection,” continued Stanley, shutting
one eye, as he gazed upon her with an
insolent leer, “man and wife in our two
rooms; how we loved each other! As
if our happiness was not complete, a
pledge of our love, (that, I believe, is the
true novel style,) was about to appear,
when you must run away and hide, and
plunge yourself up to the neck in misery
and shirt-making. How is shirt-making,
pet?”

No reply from Margaret. Crouching
even closer to the wall, her face turned
over her shoulder, she looked at him
with that corpse-like face and those great
glaring eyes.

“If you don't like me, why did you
marry me?” he said, as insolently as you
can imagine a smoothly-dressed brutal
man to speak. Without changing her
position, Margaret replied. She did not
start, and call down thunders, and burst
into those torrents of epithets and adjectives
with which some lady-novelists
make lurid their pages; for she was
not the kind of woman you find in some
specimens of lady-literature, but a real
woman! much tried, deeply suffering—
may be, somewhat fallen—but still a
woman and not a tornado in petticoats.

Margaret replied in a low voice, so low
that it scarcely rose above a whisper.
“I was upon a sick bed. Mother was
dead, and the expenses of her funeral exhausted
all my store of money. I was
sick, and friendless, and penniless.”

“Did the thought of that dead lover
of yours make you sick?” brutally interrupted
Stanley.

But, without changing her position, or
noticing his remark, Margaret went on.
“You appeared. You were kind to me.
You know I wouldn't say it, if it wasn't
true, but you were kind to me. You
supplied me with money, procured a
nurse to watch over me while I was
wild with fever. I thought you did all
this because we were cousins; I did'nt
know when a man like you treats a woman
kindly he always does it with a
purpose; he is kind, that he may pollute,
betray, and—sell!

“Well! why did you marry me?”
again interrupted Stanley, with a wicked
light in his eye.

“I recovered, and was grateful. Need
I tell you how the thousand attentions
with which you surrounded me deceived
me as to your real character.”

“Yes, I remember,” and Stanley laughed.
“I used to sit by you praising your
dead lover, the defunct carpenter. It's a
sure way to touch a woman's heart.”

She went on. “Alone in the world—
friendless—all that I loved in the grave—
in an evil hour, telling you that I
could not give you love, simply esteem,
I consented to become your wife. I
might find a thousand excuses for this—
might say that long-indulged grief and
sickness had weakened my will and
dimmed my perception—but I make no
excuse. I married you. There is no
excuse for me. And I bear the suffering
which that marriage has cost me as my
just due. The truth is, that I cannot
suffer too much for it.”

Her eyes dropped; a single tear rolled
down her colorless cheek. And she
shuddered as she had shuddered every
time Burke alluded to her lover, Harry
Morgan.

“Why did you run away from me?”
asked Stanley, the same devil's look in
his eye.

She looked at him as though he were
a reptile which she did not know whether
to despise most or fear, and her pale
face grew scarlet. “Don't ask me, Stanley.
You know why I left you. And
you know that rather than be near you,
or have you in my sight for an hour, I
would—I would—” She had no word
to express the loathing which flashed
from her eyes. Stanley, whose face
during this strange interview was unusually
flushed—whose eye shone with
even an unusual wickedness—replied:

“Well, pet! like me or not, you must
live with me. The law you know gives
a husband a very decided power over an
unruly wife. You must live with me.
You cannot hide yourself where I wont

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find you. And to-morrow I'll come to
bring you from this wretched place to a
very comfortable home. You'll think
better of it, darling.” And he rose,
drawing the velvet-lined cloak closer
about him, and advanced a step toward
her. There was a certain wildness in
his manner which she had never seen before.

O how she longed to say a word which
would humble all his schemes into dust!
“Harry lives! I am not your wife, even
if I never can be wife to him! You have
no power over me in law!”

The words were on her lips, but she
lid not utter them.

“How's the baby, Maggy, dear!” and
he advanced a step nearer. “Think of
it! It was only yesterday that I first
beheld the face of my only child! And”—
rapidly advancing, he seized her in his
arms, and put his kiss upon her lips, ere
she had the most remote idea of his intentions.
Struggling in his embrace, as
though his very touch was pestilence,
she tried to avoid his kisses, by burying
her head upon his hated bosom, but his
strong arm held her in a clutch that was
like that of death to the pale, quivering
woman.

“Here's an affectionate wife” he
laughed, and released her. She sank
into the chair, pale and panting for
breath, her hair (loosened in the struggle)
streaming over her shoulders.

Then with a laugh, and a look of
taunting insolence, he said,—“To-morrow,
pet! you remember! To-morrow!”
and showing his white teeth he moved to
the door. “To-morrow I will come and
bring you. Good-night, pet!” he laughed
again, opened the door, and was gone.

She breathed freer, like one suddenly
taken from a plague-infected room into
open air.

“To-morrow!” she echoed; “little
does he know of to-morrow!”

As she spoke, her eye was attracted
by something on the floor. It glittered
in the light. She took it up—it was a
gold chain—and had fallen from the neck
of Stanley in the late struggle. It was
not the gold chain he usually wore, but
a gold chain curiously formed of pure ore;
the chain which she had seen glittering
not an hour before around the neck of
Harry Morgan.

There was something in the sight of
it which seemed to paralyze Margaret in
every limb, and deprive her for the moment
of the power of speech. Her eyes
were riveted to the chain, and she remembered
that, even as Stanley held her
in his arms, there was a livid bruise
upon his right hand.