An unexpected, quiet, passive, but unconquerable resistance,
was opposed by the, in all other things, cowed and submissive
woman, to this demand of her domineering husband. Her fail-
ing health^for gently nurtured and tenderiderly cherished as
she had ever been, the calous brutality of her husband soon told
upon the unhappy creature— warned her that Mary would soon
be an orphan, and that upon her firmness it depended whether
the child of him to whose memory she had been, so fatally for
herself, unfaithful, should be cast homeless and penniless upon
the world, or inherit the wealth to which, by every principle of
right and equity, she was entitled. Come what' may, this trust
at least should not, she mentally resolved, be betrayed or pal-
tered with. Every imaginable expedient to vanquish her reso-
lution was resorted to. Thorndyke picked a quarrel with Ward
her father, who had lived at Dale Farm since the morrow of her
marriage with Woodley, and the old gentleman was compelled
to leave, and take up his abode with a distant and somewhat



THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 133

needy relative. Next Edward Wilford, the only son of a neigh-
boring and prosperous farmer, who had been betrothed to Mary
Woodley several months before her father's death, was brutally
insulted, and forbidden the house. All, however, failed to shake
the mother's resolution ; and at length, finding all his efforts
fruitless, Thorndyke appeared to yield the point, and upon this
subject at least ceased to harass his unfortunate victim.
