submitted longer
to the yoke of humiliation. I tell thee truly, Mittie, when I say, I
care not for your love, for which I have so long striven in vain. You do
not love your own family, and why should I expect to inspire what they,
father, brother and sister have never kindled in your breast? I care not
for your love, but I _will_ have your respect. I defy you from this
moment ever to treat me with insolence. I defy you henceforth, ever by
word, look or thought, to associate me with the idea of _contempt_."

Her eye flashed with long suppressed indignation, and her face reddened
with the liberated stream of her emotions. Rising, and gathering up her
hair, which was sweeping back from her forehead, she took her lamp and
turned to depart. Just as she reached the door she turned back and
added, in a softer tone,

"Though you will never more see me in the aspect of a seeker after
courtesy and good will, I shall never reject any overtures for
reconciliation. If the time should ever come, when you feel the need of
counsel and sympathy, the necessity of a friend; if your heart ever
awakens, Mittie, and utters the new-born cry of helplessness and pain,
you will find me ready to listen and relieve. Good night."

She passed from her presence, and Mittie felt as if she had been in a
dream, so strange and unnatural was the impression left upon her mind.
She was at first perfectly stunned with amazement, then consciousness,
accompanied with some very disagreeable stinging sensations, returned.
When a very calm, self-possessed person allows feeling or passion to
gain the ascendency over them, they are invested for the moment with
overmastering power.

"I have never done justice to her intellect," thought she, recalling the
words of her step-mother, with an involuntary feeling of admiration;
"but I want not her love. When it is necessary to my happiness I will
seek it. Love! she never cared any thing about me; she does not pretend
that she did. She tried to win my good will from policy, not
sensibility; and this is the origin of all the comforts and luxuries
with which she has surrounded me. Why should I be grateful then? Thank
Heaven! I am no hypocrite; I never dissembled, never professed what I do
not feel. If every one were as honest and independent as I am, there
would be very little of this vapid sentimentality, this love-breath,
which comes and goes like a night mist, and leaves nothing behind it."

The next morning Mittie