TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION.--RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO JEALOUS HUSBANDS.--BY FANNY FERN.
"'Percy, _dear_ Percy, take back those bitter words; as heaven is my witness, they are undeserved by me. See, my eye quails not beneath yours; my cheek blanches not; I stand before you, at this moment, with every vow I made you at the altar unbroken, in letter and spirit;' and she drew closer to him and laid her delicate hand upon his broad breast. 'Wrong me not, Percy, even in thought.'
"The stern man hesitated. Had he not _wilfully_ blinded himself, he had read truth and honor in the depths of the clear blue eyes that looked so unflinchingly into his own. For a moment, their expression overcame him; then, dashing aside the slender fingers that rested upon him, he left her with a muttered oath.
"Mary Lee had the misfortune to be very pretty, and the still greater misfortune to marry a jealous husband. Possessing a quick and ready wit, and great conversational powers, a less moderate share of personal charms would have made her society eagerly sought for.
"As soon as her eyes were opened to the defect alluded to in her husband's character, she set herself studiously to avoid the shoals and quicksands that lay in the matrimonial sea. One by one, she quietly dropped the acquaintance of gentlemen, who, from their attractiveness or preference for her society, seemed obnoxious to Percy.
"Mary was no coquette. Nature had given her a _heart_; and superior as she was to her husband, she really _loved_ him. To most women, his exacting unreasonableness would only have stimulated to a finished display of coquetry; but Mary, gentle and yielding, made no show of opposition to the most absurd requirements. But all these sacrifices had been unavailing to propitiate the fiend of jealousy--and there she sat, an hour after her husband had left her, with her hands pressed tightly together, pale and tearless, striving, in vain, to recall any cause of offence.
"Hour after hour passed by, and still he came not. The heavy tramp of feet had long since ceased beneath the window; the _pulse_ of the great city was _still_; silence and darkness brooded over its slumbering thousands. Mary could endure it no longer. Rising and putting aside the curtain, she pressed her face close against the window-pane, as if her straining eye could pierce the gloom of midnight. She hears a step! it is _his_!