If you can imagine a very heavy weight let somewhat gradually, but irresistibly, down upon young and tender shoulders, then gently lifted again, little by little, by a sympathizing and unlooked-for helper, and lastly tossed by him unexpectedly into the air, only to fall back with redoubled weight, and crush the frame that was but bowed before, you can form some idea of what had just happened to me. My mother's death, our embarrassments, my loneliness, the hard and to me uncongenial work I had to do, all came upon me together more heavily than at any time since the first fortnight that I spent at Greenville. But that was not all. Disappointment is hardly the right word to use; for I can truly say that I never made any calculations for the future upon Jim's attentions to me. They were offered so honestly and respectfully that I instinctively felt I could accept them with perfect propriety, and perhaps could scarcely with propriety refuse. I had never once asked myself what they meant, nor whither they tended. But yet I was used to them now, and had learned to prize them far more than I knew; and they must be given up. My heart-strings had unconsciously grown to him, and ought to be torn away. And I think that, beyond grief, beyond the prospect of lonely toil and poverty henceforth, beyond all the rest, was the horror of an idea which came upon me, that I had lost the control of my own mind,--that my peace had passed out of my keeping into the power of another, who, though friendly to me, neither would nor could preserve it for me,--that I was doomed to be henceforward the prey of feelings which I must try to conceal, and perhaps could not for any length of time, which lowered me in my own eyes, and would do so in those of others if they were seen by them, which were wrong, and which I could not help. These thoughts struck and stung me like so many hornets. Crying, "Mother! mother!" I sprang from my bed, and fell on my knees beside it. I did not suppose it would do much good for me to pray; but I said over and over, if only to stop myself from thinking, "O God, help me! God have mercy on me!" as fast as I could, till the town clock struck five, and I knew that I must begin to dress, and compose myself, if I would appear as usual at six o'clock at the breakfast-table.