What marvel that the untutored heart beat faster than its wont, when that golden gate of paradise was opened in expectation to her eyes? What marvel that all the lessons of childhood, which stood between her and obedience to the master of her destiny, were forgotten or only remembered with abhorrence? What marvel that the past became a dream, the present dull and unendurable, and only the delirious future worth a wish or a thought? What marvel that one evening when the full moon of August was peeping in through the trees which already began to cast their shade over the new home into the room where the "guardian" and the "ward" were sitting alone together--when the air seemed balm and the earth heaven--when the night-sounds of late summer made a sadness that was not sorrow, and temptation put on the very robes of holy feeling to do its evil work--when the lips of the subtle, bad, unscrupulous man of the world repeated words as sweet as they were unmeaning, promises as hollow as they were delicious and prayers as bewildering as they were sacrilegious--when the heart of the young girl had proved traitor to her senses and all the guardian angels of her maidenhood had fled away and left her to a conflict for which she had neither wisdom nor strength--what marvel that the moment of total madness came to one and perhaps to both, and that before it ended Eleanor Hill lay upon the breast of her destroyer, a poor dishonored thing, frightened, delirious, half-senseless, and yet blindly happier in her shame than she had ever been while the white doves still folded their wings above her!