Perkins looked aghast, muttered his unwillingness to prosecute his suit under such circumstances, and prepared to take his leave. His mutterings and apologies were all swallowed up in that furious storm of abuse and denunciation which now poured from the lips of the exemplary mother. These we need not repeat. Suffice it that the deep feelings of Julia--her sense of propriety and good taste--prevailed to keep her silent, while her mother, still raving, renewed her assurances to the pettifogger that he should certainly receive his wife at her hands on the evening of the ensuing Thursday. The unmanly suitor accepted her assurances--and took leave of mother and daughter, with the expression of a simpering hope, intended chiefly for the latter, that her objections would resolve themselves into the usual maidenly scruples when the appointed time should arrive. Julia mustered strength enough to reply in language which brought down another storm from her mother upon her devoted head. “Do not deceive Perkins--do not let the assurances of my mother deceive you. She does not know me. I can not and will not marry you. I will sooner marry the grave--the winding-sheet--the worm!” Her strength failed her the moment he left the apartment. She sank in a fainting-fit upon the floor, and was thus saved from hearing the bitter abuse which her miserable and misguided parent continued to lavish upon her, even while undertaking the task of her restoration. The evident exhaustion of her frame, her increasing feebleness, the agony of her mind, and the possibly fatal termination of her indisposition, did not in the least serve to modify the violent and vexing mood of this most unnatural woman! CHAPTER XII. “GONE TO BE MARRIED.” These proceedings, the tenor of which was briefly communicated to me in a hurried note from Julia, despatched by the hands of the physician, under a cover, to the friendly aunt, rendered it imperatively necessary that, whatever we proposed to do should be done quickly, if we entertained any hope to save. The tone of her epistle alarmed me exceedingly in one respect, as it evidently showed that she could not much longer save herself. Her courage was sinking with her spirits, which were yielding rapidly beneath the continued presence of that persecution which had so long been acting upon her. She began now to distrust her own strength--her very powers of utterance to declare her aversion to the proposed marriage, if ever the trial was brought to the threatened issue before the holy man.