ere she is."

"Why do you hate the woman so?" asked Col. M. "She seems very fond of
you."

"Yes! I cannot move but what she follows me. It is strange Major Howard
retains such a bold, impudent slut in his service."

The colonel coughed slightly and remained silent.

At length Rufus spoke again hesitatingly, "Father!" said he.

"Well!" returned Col. M., in a tone which indicated for him to proceed.

"I don't want to marry Florence Howard," said the young man, with a
great gulp, as though it cost him a mighty effort to pronounce the
words.

"Why not?" asked the father, apparently unheeding his son's emotion.
"Don't you love the girl?"

"Love her!" repeated Rufus. "I don't know whether I do or not; but I am
afraid of her."

"Afraid of a little, puny girl!" exclaimed Col. Malcome, in a towering
rage, "I did not think you such a pitiful craven."

The young man seemed angered by his father's words, but made no retort.

"Why are you afraid of her?" inquired the colonel after a while.

"Because she looks so proud and stern upon me, and treats me with such
scorn and contempt."

"O, never mind that!" said his father. "When she is once your wife trust
me to lower her loftiness, and make her as meek and humble as you could
wish. Let us go in now. How wildly this storm is driving! I hope it may
clear before the hour for the marriage arrives." Thus speaking, the
father and son entered the hall and sought their respective apartments.

While this scene was passing on the piazza, Florence sat in her room
with her journal open on the table before her.

"The last evening of my free, unfettered existence has drawn on," she
wrote. "How wildly shrieks the wind, driving great torrents of rain
against my curtained casements! It is fit a night like this should usher
in my day of doom. Father seems delighted with the approaching festival,
and mother has lost the dread she formerly evinced, which I now think
was occasioned by the fear of losing me from her side. Hannah is almost
wild with glee. She follows the steps of Rufus closely as his shadow. He
hates her, and in this one point our feelings sympathize, but in no
other. It is impossible to describe the loathing and abhorrence with
which I regard the man who in a few more hours will be my husband. O,
heavens! will no power save me from a fate so dreadful as a lifetime
passed with him? Alas, no! Our beautiful home is gone, and we are poor,
and had been shelterless but for thes