"Ah," said I, determining bravely to tell my story, "there is another side to that." They all looked at me in amazement, as I began at the beginning and related all I had felt and suffered. I confessed all my hard feelings toward Frank, and all my jealousy of Fidelia. It was now the Doctor's turn to start up in awful indignation. I told him how I had been led as in his case, to see everything through a false medium, and I had feared that the affection, she told me they had formerly felt for each other, had revived to such a degree as to make him regret that the marriage of both prevented their union.
The intensity of Joseph's feelings kept him silent. "Well," said uncle, at length, "Fidelia is rightly punished for her fiendish plot in trying to alienate your affections from each other."
He turned to aunt, who said, "I thought it best at the time to say nothing about it. I merely told them she was gone."
Uncle resumed his seat, and sitting very erect in his chair, said, "Mr. Schuyler went out soon after you were taken sick, and has not yet returned. His wife insisted that we should take no pains to bring him back. She said she wasn't going to have him think, she would run after him. But I could see, as hour after hour passed away, she grew anxious and impatient for his return. This morning, when we were seated at breakfast, a boy brought a note from him directed to me, in which he said that before that letter reached us he should be on his way to Germany, where he intended to pass the rest of his life. He enclosed fifty dollars for his wife, which he said was all she should ever have from him, and closed by saying it was her own fault that she had not a happy home and a devoted husband; and that if she had been willing to accede to his wishes, she would at least have been the owner of a handsome estate. That was true," added uncle, "he wished to buy a beautiful place on the Hudson which he offered to settle upon her, but she would not consent to live in so retired a situation. I used all my influence with her to no purpose."
"When she received the note, or rather when I read it to her, and gave her the money, she was at first very angry, and thought he only wrote it to frighten her; but I soon convinced her that I thought otherwise, when she suddenly started for New York, where they had been boarding since their marriage, in the hope of detaining him."