which did not change my opinion of
either her intellect or intention, but on the contrary confirmed it in
both.

All this while, although I was fixed, "firm as the surge-repelling
rock," in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the
rashness which had led me to make it. Through life, I have been in no
bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much
desired to be free. After my return home, I saw nothing to change my
opinions of her in any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now
spent my time in planning how I might get along through life after my
contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I
might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as
much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.

After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here I am,
wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the "scrape"; and now I want to
know if you can guess how I got out of it----out, clear, in every sense
of the term; no violation of word, honor, or conscience. I don't believe
you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer
says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had delayed
the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do (which, by the way,
had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well
bring it to a consummation without further delay; and so I mustered
my resolution, and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to
relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it through an
affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the
peculiar circumstances of her case; but on my renewal of the charge,
I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it
again and again but with the same success, or rather with the same want
of success.

I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found
myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed
to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at
the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also
that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have,
had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the
whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a
little in love with he