ent.
"You are too much of a gentleman to speak as you have, unless it came
from your heart. O my God! is this reality, or am I dreaming?" She
drooped her head upon his shoulder, and said: "'Whither thou goest I
will go; thy house shall be my house, and thy God my God.'"

The full moon was just above the horizon, and the long dark shadows
veiled them from view. The judge rode in at the gate, and leaving his
horse, went directly into the house. A moment after a carriage drove
into the court, and from it dismounted the brother-in-law sot and her
weird sister; for indeed she was a very Hecate in looks and mischief.
Alice stole away to her chamber; and the happy stranger to wander among
the shrubs, regardless of the damp and chill.

Here were two young hearts conscious of happiness; but was it a
happiness derived from the respective merits and congenial natures of
the two known to each other? They were comparatively strangers, knowing
little of the antecedents of each other. Each was unhappily
situated--the one from poverty, the other owing to her wealth; the one
ardently desirous of bettering pecuniarily his position, the other to
release herself from restraints that were tyrannical and to enjoy that
independence which she felt was her natural right. Might not these
considerations override the purer impulses of the heart arising from
that regard for qualities which win upon the mind until ripened first
into deep respect, then mellowed into tender affection by association
protracted and intimate? They had been reared in societies radically
different: their early impressions were equally antagonistic; but their
aims were identical--to escape from present personal embarrassments.

They had met romantically. He had been removed for many months from the
presence of civilized society, though naturally fond of female
association, and craving deeply in his heart the communion again of
that intercourse, which had (as he had learned from sad experience)
been the chief cause of the happiness of his youth. He met her first as
he entered anew the relations of civilized and social society. She was
young and exquisitely beautiful. Their meeting was but for a moment;
their intercourse was intensely delightful to him, and the interest her
ardent nature manifested toward him was extremely captivating. He had
gone from her, with her in all his heart.

She for the time was free. She felt not the restraint of her female
relatives, and the a