Thank you, Sarah; you are a perfect treasure."

"Whatever I was, or whatever I am, Charley, I can never be anything
more to you than a mere acquaintance--I don't think ever we were much
more--but what I want to tell you is, that if ever you have any serious
notion of me, you must put it out of your head."

"Why so, Sarah?"

"Why so," she replied, hastily; "why, bekaise I don't wish it--isn't
that enough for you, if you have spirit?"

"Well, but I'd like to know why you changed your mind."

"Ah," said she; "well, afther all, that's only natural--it is but
raisonable; an' I'll tell you; in the first place, there's a want of
manliness about you that I don't like--I think you've but little heart
or feelin'. You toy with the girls--with this one and that one--an' you
don't appear to love any one of them--in short, you're not affectionate,
I'm afeard. Now, here am I, an' I can scarcely say, that ever you
courted me like a man that had feelin'. I think you're revengeful, too;
for I have seen you look black an' angry at a woman, before now. You
never loved me, I know--I say I know you did not. There, then, is some
of my raisons--but I'll tell you one more, that's worth them all. I love
another now--ay," she added, with a convulsive sigh, "I love
another; and, I know, Charley, that he can't love me--there's more
lightnin'--what a flash! Oh, I didn't care this minute if it went
through my heart."

"Don't talk so, Sarah."

"I know what's before me--disappointment--disappointment in
everything--the people say I'm wild and very wicked in my temper--an' I
am, too; but how could I be otherwise? for what did I ever see or hear
undher our own miserable roof, but evil talk and evil deeds? A word of
kindness I never got from my father or from Nelly; nothing but the bad
word an' the hard blow--until now that she is afeard of me; but little
she knew, that many a time when I was fiercest, an' threatened to put a
knife into her, there was a quiver of affection in my heart; a yearnin',
I may say, afther kindness, that had me often near throwin' my arms
about her neck, and askin' her why she mightn't as well be kind as cruel
to me; but I couldn't, bekaise I knew that if I did, she'd only tramp on
me, an' despise me, an' tyrannize over me more and more."

She uttered these sentiments under the influence of deep feeling,
checkered with an occasional burst of wild distraction, that seemed to
originate from much bitterness of heart.

"Is