or, "but you will not
lose it by evading the lesser evil for the greater. I have heard of
women who fled to poverty from dissatisfaction with a husband, but pride
survived and made poverty dreadful. Pride in either case increased the
discontent. You should take the step which will let pride be absorbed in
duty, if not in love."

"Duty?" thought Vesta. "That is a reposeful word, better than Love. Mr.
Milburn," she said aloud, "how is it my duty to do what you ask?"

"I think I perceive that you have a loyal heart, a conscientiousness
that deceit cannot even approach. Something has already made you slow to
marriage, else, with your wonders, I would not have had the chance to
be now rejected by you. Marriage has become too formidable, perhaps, to
you, by the purity of your heart, the more so because you looked upon it
to be your destiny. It _is_ your fate, but you contend against it. Look
upon it, then, as a duty, such as you expect in others--in your slave
maid, for instance."

"Alas!" Vesta said, "she may marry freely. I am the slave."

"No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among strangers with your
father's effects, will feel so perishing for sympathy and protection
that love, in whatever ugly form it comes, will be God's blessing to her
poor heart. What you repel in the revulsion of fortune--the yoke of a
husband--millions of women have bent to as if it was the very rainbow of
promise set in heaven."

"How do you know so much of women's trials, Mr. Milburn? Have you had
sisters, or other ladies to woo?"

"I have seen human nature in my little shop, not, like your rare nature,
refined by happy fortune and descent, but of moderate kind, and
struggling downward like a wounded eagle. They have come to me at first
for cheaper articles of necessity or smaller portions than other stores
would sell, looking on me with contempt. At last they have sacrificed
their last slave, their last pair of shoes, and, when it was too late,
their false pride has surrendered to shelter under a negro's hut, or
dance barefooted in my store for a cup of whiskey."

"Sir," exclaimed Vesta indignantly, rising from her rocker, "do you set
this warning for me?"

As she rose Meshach Milburn thought his wealth was merely pebbles and
shells to her perfection, now animated with a queen's spirit.

"Miss Vesta," he said, "pardon me, but I have just issued from many
generations of forest poverty, and knowing how hard it is to break that
t