"By some such sorcery as wicked demons in the wise allegories of fable obtain a control over good spirits, the demon who had thus risen up in my path obtained an ascendency over my father. It was impossible that he could have persuaded my father, who was clear-sighted and sagacious, into the belief that he possessed a single attribute of goodness; it must have been by the force of a fascination, such as serpents are said to exercise over children, that he wrought his ends. And the comparison was never applied with greater justice, for my father was as guileless as a child in mere worldly affairs, while the other was a subtle compound of cunning and venom, glazed over with a most hypocritical exterior. "He worked at his purpose for months and months in the dark, by artifices which assisted his progress without betraying his aim. He adroitly avoided an abrupt disclosure of his design, for he knew, or feared, that if it came too suddenly, it would have shocked even my father. He saw that my fancy was taken up elsewhere, and the first part of his plot was, to prejudice and poison my father's mind against his rival. In this he effectually succeeded. But it was a more difficult matter to bring round his own object, and he never could have achieved it, with all his skill, had he not been so mixed up with our affairs as to have it in his power to involve my father in a net-work of embarrassments. The meshes were woven round him with consummate ingenuity, and every effort at extrication only drew them tighter and tighter. "Had I known as much of the world then as I do now I might have acted differently. But I was a girl; my sensibility was easily moved; my terrors were easily alarmed; and I loved my father too passionately to be able to exercise a calm judgment where his safety was concerned. It was this devotion--impetuous and unreflecting--that gave an advantage to the fiend, of which he availed himself unrelentingly, and which threw me, bound and fettered, at his feet. "I will not dwell on these memories. My heart was harrowed by a terrible conflict. I know not how it might have been, had I not gathered a little strength from wounded pride. A circumstance came to my relief which crushed my enthusiasm, and from that instant determined my fate.