an.

"I was sixteen when we first met. He was not then what he is now, but he
was handsome enough to create an excitement in town and to lift the girl
he singled out into an enviable prominence. Unfortunately, I was that
girl. I say unfortunately, because his good looks failed to arouse in
me more than a passing admiration; and in accepting his attentions,
I consulted my necessities and pride rather than the instincts of my
better nature. When he asked me to marry him I recoiled. I did not know
why then, nor did I know why later; but know why now. However, I let
this premonition pass and engaged myself to him, and the one happy
moment I knew was when I told my mother what I had done, and saw her joy
and heard the hope with which she impulsively cried: 'It is something I
can write your uncle. Who knows? Perhaps he may forgive me my marriage
when he hears that my child is going to do so well!' Poor mother! she
had felt the glamour of my lover's good looks and cleverness much more
than I had. She saw from indications to which I was blind that I was
going to marry a man of mark, and was much more interested in the
possible reply she might receive to the letter with which she had broken
the silence of years between herself and her family than in the marriage
itself.

"But days passed, a week, and no answer came. My uncle--the only
relative remaining in which we could hope to awaken any interest, or
rather, the only one whose interest would be worth awakening, he being a
millionaire and unmarried--declined, it appeared, any communication with
one so entirely removed from his sympathies; and the disappointment of
it broke my mother's heart. Before my wedding-day came she was lying in
the bare cemetery I had passed so often with a cold dread in my young
and bounding heart.

"With her loss the one true and unselfish bond which held me to my lover
was severed, and, unknown to him--(perhaps he hears it now for the first
time)--I had many hours of secret hesitation which might have ended in a
positive refusal to marry him if I had not been afraid of his anger
and the consequences of an open break. With all his protestations of
affection and the very ardent love he made me, he had not succeeded in
rousing my affections, but he had my fears. I knew that to tell him to
his face I would not marry him would mean death to him and possibly to
myself. Such intuition, young as I was, did I have of his character,
though I comprehended so