Then it seemed that the
waters closed over her head.
* * * * *
Agnes, left alone in the homestead, had a few days of perfect relief,
except from anonymous letters and newspaper clippings delivered by mail.
That refined handwriting which had steadily poured out the venom of some
concealed hostility survived all other correspondence--delicate as the
graceful circles of the tiniest fish-hooks whose points and barbs enter
deepest in the flesh.
"Whom can this creature be?" asked Agnes, bringing up her strong mind
from its trouble. "I can have made no such bitter enemy by any act of
mine. A man would hardly pursue so light a purpose with such stability.
There is more than jealousy in it; it is sincere hate, drawn, I should
think, from a deep social or mental resentment, and enraged because I do
not sink under my troubles. Yes, this must be a woman who believes me
innocent but wishes my ruin. Some one, perhaps, who is sinning
unsuspected, and, in her envy of another and purer one, gloats in the
scandal which does not justly stain me. The anonymous letter," thought
Agnes, "is a malignant form of conscience, after all!"
But life, as it was growing to be in the Zane house, was hardly worth
living. Podge Byerly was broken down and dangerously ill at her mother's
little house.
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