with me? My uncle and aunt will expect to see you, and Anna Gray is
here. You can make your first essay toward the rich match this
evening."

"Nonsense!" he said, impatiently, yet he accompanied me. I knew he did
not like to lose sight of me.

Never had I exerted myself so much to please any one, as I did that
night to charm and attract him;--not, indeed, by any marked attention;
that would have failed of its object. But I talked and danced; I
displayed for his benefit all that I had acquired of ease and manner
since he left. I saw his astonishment, that the pale, quiet girl who
was wont to sit in some corner, almost unnoticed, should now be the
life of that gay circle. I made him admire me most at the very moment
he had lost me forever,--and so far, all was well.

I went to my room that night a different creature. That place had been
a kind of sanctuary to me. By its vine-draped window I had loved to sit
and think of him, to read the books he liked, and fashion my mind to
what he could approve. But the spot which I had left, a hopeful and
loving girl, I returned to, a forsaken and revengeful woman. My whole
nature was wrought up to one purpose,--to repay him, to the last iota,
all he had made me suffer, all the humiliation, the despair. It was
strange how this purpose upbore and consoled me; for I needed
consolation. I hated him, yet I loved him fiercely, too; I despised
him, yet I knew no other man would ever touch my heart. He had been, he
always must be, everything to me,--the one object to which all my
thoughts tended, to which my every action was referred.

I took from a drawer his letters and his few love-gifts. The paper I