Fortune favored our movements. Our preparations had been properly laid, and Edgerton had the divine in waiting. In less than half an hour after leaving the house of her parents, Julia and myself stood up to be married. Pale, feeble, sad--the poor girl, though she felt no reluctance, and suffered not the most momentary remorse for the steps she had taken, and was about to take, was yet necessarily and naturally impressed with the solemnity and the doubts which hung over the event. Young, timid, artless, apprehensive, she was unsupported by those whom nature had appointed to watch over and protect her; and though they had neglected, and would have betrayed their trust, she yet could not but feel that there was an incompleteness about the affair, which, not even the solemn accents of the priest, the deep requisitions of those pledges which she was called upon to make, and the evident conviction which she now entertained, that what had been done was necessary to be done, for her happiness, and even her life--could entirely remove. There was an awful but sweet earnestness in the sad, intense glance of entreaty, with which she regarded me when I made the final response. Her large black eye dilated, even under the dewy suffusion of its tears, as it seemed to say:-- “It is to you now--to you alone--that I look for that protection, that happiness which was denied where I had best right to look for it. Ah! let me not look, let me not yield myself to you in vain!” How imploring, yet how resigned was that glance of tears--love in tears, yet love that trusted without fear! It was the embodiment of innocence, struggling between hope and doubt, and only strengthened for the future by the pure, sweet faith which grew out of their conflict. I look back upon that scene, I recall that glance, with a sinking of the heart which is full of terror and terrible reproach. Ah! then, then, I had no fear, no thought, that I should see that look, and others, more sad, more imploring still, and see them without a corresponding faith and love! I little knew, in that brief, blessed hour, how rapidly the blindness of the heart comes on, even as the scale over the eyes--but such a scale as no surgeon's knife can cut away. CHAPTER XIII. BAFFLED FURY.