"Then I may tell you, Hester, plainly, that it would give me pleasure to see you 'settled,' as people call it--to see you married and in your own house, before I am removed from mine. Circumstances," said my father, slowly, "have made me a harsh judge of those romantic matters that belong to youth. I am not sure that it would much delight me to suppose my daughter the heroine of a passionate love-story. Will you consent to obey me, Hester, in an important matter as readily as in the trifling ones of your childhood? I have no proposal to make to you. I only desire your promise to set my mind at ease, and obey me when I have." My face burned, my head throbbed, my heart leaped to my throat. Shame, pride, embarrassment, and the deeper, desolate fear of what was to happen to my father, contended within me. I could not give an assent to this strange request. I could not say in so many words that I gave up utterly to him the only veto a woman has upon the fashion of her life. Yet I could not refuse to do what, under these circumstances, he asked of me. I made him no answer. I clasped my hands tightly over my brow, where the veins seemed full to bursting. For an instant I felt, with a shudder, what a grand future that was, full of all joyous possibilities, which I was called upon to surrender. I had thought to myself often that my prospects were neither bright nor encouraging; at this moment I saw, by a sudden light, what a glorious uncertainty these prospects were, and how I clung to them. They were nothing, yet the promise of everything was in them; and my father asked me to give them up--to relinquish all that might be. It was a great trial; and I could not answer him a word. "You do not speak, Hester," he said. "Have you no reply, then, to my question?" "I want no protector, father," I cried, almost with sullenness. "If I must be left desolate, let me be desolate. Do not mock me with false succor. I want no home. Let Alice take care of me. I will not want very much. Alice is fond of me, though I do not deserve it. Let her take care of me till I die."