ught Eudora. She saw I
was troubled, and asked me the cause. I told her. A shadow, a dark,
portentous shadow, suddenly clouded her face;--as suddenly it passed
away, giving place to a look of sharp, painful agony, which was
succeeded by a return of something like her natural expression. Then she
scrutinized my face calmly, critically. All this did not occupy half a
minute. Ere one could say it had been, Eudora was apparently the same as
ever. God alone knows all which in that half-minute rose in that young
girl's heart. She took my hand; she reproached me for my apparent
distrust of her; she said she was mine to love and to honor me forever.
She would go at once to her mother--so she called my cousin--and tell
her so. Thus saying, she left me. And I--I did not then understand
the struggle and the victory of the poor girl over herself. I did not
reflect that no maidenly blush, no charming confusion, announced my
happy destiny,--no kiss, no caress, no sign that the heart's citadel had
surrendered; but, instead, a calmness, a composure, and a hastening from
my presence. No, I thought nothing of this; I only considered that now
the time was at hand when Eudora would be mine!

_I married her._ It was but three weeks after this conversation. I was
in haste, and Eudora herself seemed desirous that the day should be an
early one. My cousin was amazed. I enjoyed her discomfiture; for she did
not relish the thought that I should thus set at nought her advice and
overturn her theory. She shook her head,--she attempted a protest,--and
then began zealously the preparations for the wedding.

I wish I could give you some clear idea of the wife I had gained,
some slight notion of the happiness and delight and bliss in which I
revelled,--that is, if a man purely and unutterably selfish has a right
to call that happiness--which he enjoys. Eudora lived only for me. She
rose, she sat, she came, she went only to pleasure me. She had
one thought, one idea: it was for me. And what was my return?
Nothing,--absolutely and literally nothing. I accepted every service,
every sweet, loving token, every delicate act of devotion, as something
to which I was entitled,--as my right. Forty-four years old, a life with
one idea, a narrow, selfish, overbearing nature, ministered to by such a
creature, noble, lovely, true, with eighteen years of life!

Three years thus passed,--three years which ate slowly into Eudora's
heart,--teaching her she _had_ a he