With reference to the wishes and intentions of Dr. Philip Pomeroy himself, it is not much more easy to form any accurate calculation. That he did not wish to follow the example set him by so many unscrupulous traffickers in female virtue, and drive away at once from his presence the woman whose life he had poisoned, is only too certain. That he had no intention of making her legally his own by marriage, his own tongue had declared. It only remains to believe that he held towards the poor girl some sort of tiger mixture of love and hate, which would not consent to make her happy in the only manner which could secure that end, and which yet would not consent to part with her at any demand or upon any terms. Other than she was, to him, she could not be: as she was, she seemed to minister to some unholy but actual need of his nature; and he held her to himself with an evil tenacity which really seemed to afford a new study in psychology. Circumstances were close at hand, calculated to show something of the completeness of the net drawn around the feet of the young girl, even if they did not clearly point out the hand drawing the cord of continued restraint. Miss Hester Pomeroy died suddenly in the winter of 1860, alike guiltless and ignorant of the evil which had taken place under the roof which owned her as its mistress, regretted by her brother with as much earnest feeling as he had the capacity of bestowing upon so undemonstrative a relation, and sincerely mourned by the forced dweller beneath that roof, to whom her presence had been a protection in the eyes of the world, and to whose cruel lot she had furnished more alleviations than she had herself capacity to understand. With this death, the introduction of a mere housekeeper to take the place which she had so worthily filled, the additional loneliness which was inevitable when a hired stranger occupied her room, and the certainty that the last excuse of propriety for her remaining was removed,--it may be supposed that the struggle in the mind of the poor girl began anew, and raged with redoubled violence. The desire to be freed from the presence and the power of her destroyer had by that time grown to be an absorbing thought, ever present with her, and worthy of any possible sacrifice to give it reality. Any _possible_ sacrifice: to poor Eleanor Hill, sacrifices which many others would have embraced without a moment's hesitation, seemed literal madness. The certainty of penury and the probability of open shame pressed her close; and she could not shake off the double fetter. Her tyrant would give her no release; and she succumbed to her living death once more. Months longer of weary waiting for deliverance, every spark of love died out from her heart, and yet soul and body alike enslaved. Oh, God of all the suffering!--how often has this been, with no visible hand to deliver, with no pen to chronicle! Months, and then came what seemed the opportunity of the poor girl's life.