“I fancy I must have had a very vague idea of what that one small word meant, and was besides in an unusually contented and peaceful state of mind, or I should, undoubtedly, have raised one of his cut-glass decanters and smashed in his head with it. I know how I should receive such an assertion from him now, but I think I took it then with a resignation, he must have found mighty edifying; and when he went on to tell me that all this richness and greatness were to be shared by me when that celestial time came, I think I rather liked the idea than otherwise. The horrible creature seemed to have woke up that day, for the first time, and all of a sudden, to a conviction that I was in a fair way to become a woman, and rather a handsome one, and that he had better make sure of me before any accident interfered to take me from him. Full of this laudable notion, he became a daily visitor of mine from thenceforth, and made the discovery, simultaneously with myself, that the oftener he came the less favor he found in my sight. I had, before, tacitly disliked him, and shrank with a natural repulsion from his dreadful ugliness; but now, from negative dislike, I grew to positive hate. The utter loathing and abhorrence I have had for him ever since, began then--I grew dimly and intuitively conscious of what he would make me, and shrank from my fate with a vague horror not to be told in words. I became strong in my fearful dread of it. I told him I detested, abhorred, loathed, hated him; that he might keep his riches, greatness, and ungainly self for those who wanted him; they were temptations too weak to move me. “Of course, there was raving, and storming, threatening, terrible looks and denunciations, and I quailed and shrank like a coward, but was obstinate still. Then as a dernier resort, he tried another bribe--the glorious one of liberty, the one he knew would conquer me, and it did. He promised me freedom--if I married him, I might go out into the great unknown world, fetterless and free; and I, O! fool that I was! consented. Not that my object was to stay with him one instant longer her my prison doors were opened; no, I was not quite so besotted as that--once out, and the little demon might look for me with last year's partridges. Of course, those demoniac eyes read my heart like an open book; and when I pronounced the fatal 'yes,' he laughed in that delightful way of his own, which will probably be the last thing you will hear when you lay your head under the axe.