of the quieter,
frailer sort, instead of being, as she was, elastic, impulsive,
recuperative, she might have been crushed. She was wounded in her heart
of hearts, but all her pride and hardihood, of which she had not a
little, had now taken up arms against outrageous fortune. She was stung
at every thought of August and his letter, of Betsey Malcolm and her
victory, of the fact that her mother had read the letter and knew of her
humiliation. And she paced the floor of her room, and resolved to resist
and to be revenged. She would marry anybody, that she might show Betsey
and August they had not broken he heart and that her love did not
go begging.

O Julia! take care. Many another woman has jumped off that precipice!

And she would escape from her mother. The indications of affection
adroitly given by Humphreys were all remembered now. She could have him,
and she would. He would take her to Cincinnati. She would have her
revenge all around. I am sorry to show you my heroine in this mood. But
the fairest climes are sometimes subject to the fiercest hurricanes, the
frightfulest earthquakes!

After an hour the room seemed hot. She pulled back the chintz curtain
and pushed up the window. The blue-grass in the pasture looked cool as
it drank the heavy dews. She climbed through the window on to the long,
old-fashioned upper porch. She sat down upon an old-fashioned settee
with rockers, and began to rock. The motion relieved her nervousness and
fanned her hot cheeks. Yes, she would accept the first respectable lover
that offered. She would go to the city with Humphreys, if he asked her.
It is only fair to say that Julia did not at all consider--she was not
in a temper to consider--what a marriage with Humphreys implied. She
only thought of it on two sides--the revenge upon August and Betsey,
and the escape from a thralldom now grown more bitter than death. True,
her conscience was beginning to awaken, and to take up arms against her
resolve. But nothing could be plainer. In marrying Mr. Humphreys she
should marry a friend, the only friend she had. In marrying him she
would satisfy her mother, and was it not her duty to sacrifice something
to her mother's happiness, perhaps her mother's life?

[Illustration: TEMPTED.]

Yes, yes, Julia, a false spirit of self-sacrifice is another path over
the cliff! In such a mood as this all paths lead into the abyss.

Her mind was made up. She braced her will against all the relentings