heart. But
the mother rejected him with anger and scorn. He was not rich, though
belonging to a family of high character, and so fell far below her
requirements. Under a pressure that almost drove the girl to despair,
she gave her consent to a marriage that looked more terrible than death.
A month before the time fixed for, its consummation, she barred the
contract by a secret union with Granger.

Edith knew her mother's character too well to hope for any
reconciliation, so far as Mr. Granger was concerned. Coming in as he had
done between her and the consummation of her highest ambition, she could
never feel toward him anything but the most bitter hatred; and so, after
remaining at home for about a week after her secret marriage, she wrote
this brief letter to her mother and went away:

"My DEAR MOTHER: I do not love Spencer Wray, and would rather die than
marry him, and so I have made the marriage to which my heart has never
consented, an impossibility. You have left me no other alternative but
this. I am the wife of George Granger, and go to cast my lot with his.

"Your loving daughter,

"EDITH."

To her father she wrote:

"My DEAR, DEAR FATHER: If I bring sorrow to your good and loving heart
by what I have done, I know that it will be tempered with joy at my
escape from a union with one from whom my soul has ever turned with
irrepressible dislike. Oh, my father, you can understand, if mother
cannot, into what a desperate strait I have been brought. I am a deer
hunted to the edge of a dizzy chasm, and I leap for life over the dark
abyss, praying for strength to reach the farther edge. If I fail in the
wild effort, I can only meet destruction; and I would rather be bruised
to death on the jagged rocks than trust myself to the hounds and
hunters. I write passionately--you will hardly recognize your quiet
child; but the repressed instincts of my nature are strong, and peril
and despair have broken their bonds. I did not consult you about the
step I have taken, because I dared not trust you with my secret. You
would have tried to hold me back from the perilous leap, fondly hoping
for some other way of escape. I had resolved on putting an impassable
gulf between me and danger, if I died in the attempt. I have taken the
leap, and may God care for me!

"I have laid up in my heart of hearts, dearest of fathers, the precious
life-truths that so often fell from your lips. Not a word that you ever
said about the sacred