lost
Paradise by her simplicity: the Jewish maidens carried to Babylon, the
Gothic virgins dragged at the horse-tails of the Moors, the daughters of
Palestine and Byzantium consigned to Arab sensualists, and made to
follow their nomadic tents, and the almond-eyed damsels of China
surrendered by their parents to the wild Kalmucks, to be beaten and
starved on every cold plain of Asia, till life was laid down with
neither hope nor fear.

"I am happier than millions of my sex," Vesta said; "my captor does not
despise me, at least. Perhaps he will treat me kinder than I think, and
give me time to draw towards him without this deadly pain and shame."

Then she almost repented of her hasty decision to marry this night,
instead of after longer acquaintance, which Mr. Milburn, no doubt, would
have granted, and his words were remembered with accusation: "What will
the world say to your marriage after a single day's acquaintance with
me?" "Will this haste not be repented, or become a subject of reproach
to you?" Was it too late to recall her words, and ask for delay?

"No," thought Vesta, "I am to keep, at least, my mind maiden and chaste,
instead of playing the unstable coquette with that. I will not let him
begin to think me weak and changeful already."

To see if there was the least glimmer of relief from this marriage Vesta
crossed to her mother's room, and found Mrs. Custis with her head
wrapped in handkerchiefs steeped in cologne, and a vial of laudanum in
her hand, and in a condition bordering on hysteria.

"Mamma," said poor Vesta, "are you in pain?"

"Oh!" screamed Mrs. Custis, "I am just dying here of cruelty and
brutality. Your father is a villain. I'll have that rascal, Milburn,
killed. Go get me ink and paper, daughter, and sit here and write me a
letter to my brother, Allan McLane, in Baltimore. He shall settle with
Judge Custis for this robbery, and take you and me back to Baltimore,
leaving your father to go to the almshouse or the jail, I don't care
which."

"Mother," exclaimed Vesta, "what a sin! to abuse poor father now in all
his trouble!"

"Trouble!" echoed Mrs. Custis, mockingly, "what trouble has he had, I
would like to know? Living in the woods like a Turk among his barefooted
forest concubines! Spending my money, raked and scraped by my poor
father in the sugar importation, to make puddle iron out of the swamp,
and be considered a smart man! The family is broken up. We are paupers,
and now 'it i