Yes, that was our pet scheme, indulged in to the last. But we are compelled to admit with the poet, that "best laid plans go oft astray." We are also compelled to think half wickedly with Amy--what pity it was Jude Rush fell down a precipice breaking his neck, thus giving his wife liberty to capture her own good master--and what pity it was too that Jude Thornton Rush did _not_ fall down some precipice and did _not_ break his neck before, spider-like, he had woven his fine web, and said softly to Della's daughter: "Will you walk into my parlor?" For, something like a spider was Thornton Rush. He was quite tall and too slender. His body was out of proportion to his long limbs, and his hands and feet had the remarkable faculty of protruding too far from every garment, even those the tailor declared should be long enough _this_ time. The "ninth part of a man" would seize the sleeve at the wrist with both hands, give a good jerk and an emphatic _there_! But when Thornton Rush was ordered to lift his arm naturally, the wrist protruded like a turtle's neck. "He must be made of gutta percha," soliloquized the discomfited tailor, giving him up as an incorrigible _non-fit_. The rather stooping shoulders and long neck supported a splendid head for Thornton Rush. This was indeed his crowning attraction. Short silken curls of raven black clustered around it, shading a wide white forehead and delicately fashioned ear. He had a beautifully arched brow, heavily pencilled, within which a glittering black eye, too deep set, gleamed forth with unaccountable attraction. His nose was straight, small, but full of nerve. You would never guess from that handsome, firm-set mouth of his, where decision and resolution played about the cherry lips and dimpled chin, that he would have proved the coward and run from duty and from danger. No; but then Thornton Rush was made up of contradictions. His mental and moral, like his physical organization, was full of angularities, discrepancies, and unharmonious combinations. He could be gentle as the dove, but fierce as the tiger; kind and confiding as any child, but cruel and deceitful as Lucifer transformed. So opposite qualities are seldom found combined. The most brave men are often the most gentle; the most trustful are frank and open-hearted. To parody Byron's eulogy on "The wondrous three," Nature has formed but one such--hush! She broke the die in moulding Thornton Rush. What do you say? Althea and Thornton married and not one word about the courtship, that most interesting of all portions of a love-history! It was the tragedy of "the spider and the fly" enacted over again. We would but shudder to watch that wicked, sly, patient tarantula, coaxing, flattering, urging the poor little fly, whose bright wings are singed with his hot breath, and whose wonderful eyes are held fast by the fascination of his scintillant, unrelenting gaze.