'This interesting creature,' thought he, 'is trying to play me a trick.--She hides her face and pretends to be a fright, while the coquetry of her manners and the perfect ease of her conversation convince me that she cannot be otherwise than beautiful.--What, the owner of that superb voice and that elegant form, _ugly_? Impossible! Now I can easily guess her object in trying to play off this little piece of deception upon me; I have read somewhere of a lady who kept her face constantly veiled, and proclaimed herself to be hideously ugly, which was universally believed, notwithstanding which she secured an admirer, who loved her for her graces of mind; he offered her his hand, and she agreed to marry him, provided that he would not seek to behold her face until after the performance of the ceremony--adding, that if he saw how ugly she was, he would certainly never marry her. 'I love you for your mind, and care not for the absence of beauty,' cried the lover. They were married; they retired to their chamber. 'Now prepare yourself for an awful sight,'--said the bride, slowly raising her veil. The husband could not repress a shudder--he gazed for the first time upon the face of his wife--when lo and behold! instead of an ugly and disfigured face, he saw before him a countenance radiant with celestial beauty! 'Dear husband,' said the lovely wife, casting her arms around her astonished and happy lord, 'you loved me truly, although you thought me ugly; such devotion and such disinterested love well merit the prize of beauty.' 'Now, I feel assured,' said Mr. Thurston to himself, pursuing the current of his thoughts--'that this young lady, Miss Franklin, is trying to deceive me in a similar manner, in order to test the sincerity of my affection; and should I marry her, I would find her to be a paragon of beauty. Egad, she is so accomplished and bewitching, that I've more than half a mind to propose, and make her Mrs. T.' The worthy deacon (for such he was,) being a middle-aged man of very good looks, and moreover very rich, Josephine was determined to 'catch him' if she could; she therefore took advantage of his disbelief in her deformity, and, while she persisted in her assurances that she was hideously ugly, she made those assurances in a manner so light and playful, that Mr. T. would have taken his oath that she was beautiful, and he became more and more smitten with the mysterious veiled lady, whose face he had never seen. Josephine, with consummate art, was resolved, if possible, to entice him into matrimony; and once his wife, she knew that in case he refused to live with her on discovering her awful deformity, he would liberally provide for her support, and thus her mother and herself would be enabled again to live in luxury. As for Sophia, she no longer lived with them--the fair, innocent girl had gone to occupy a position to be stated hereafter.