note; but the whole tenor of his character and conduct forbade this
conviction.

"No! no!" I muttered to myself, as the doubt suggested itself to
my mind; "no! no! it is the old insolence--the insolence of pride,
of conscious wealth--of power, as he thinks, to crush! But he is
mistaken. He shall find defiance. Let him but repeat those sarcasms
and that sneer which are but too frequent on his lips when he speaks
to me, and I will answer him, for the first time, by a narration
which shall sting him to the very soul, if he has one!"

This resolution was scarcely made when the image of Julia Clifford--the
sweet child--a child now no longer-the sweet woman--interposed,
and my temper was subdued of its resolve, though its bitterness
remained unqualified.

And what of Julia Clifford? I have said but little of her for some
time past, but she has not been forgotten. Far from it. She was
still sufficiently the attraction that drew me to the dwelling of
my selfish uncle. In the three years that I had been at the mercantile
establishment, her progress, in mind and person, had been equally
ravishing and rapid. She was no more the child, but the blooming
girl--the delicate blossom swelling to the bud--the bud bursting into
the flower--but the bloom, and the beauty, and the innocence--the
rich tenderness, and the dewy sweet, still remained the same through
all the stages of her progress from the infant to the woman. Wealth,
and the arrogant example of those about her, had failed to change
the naturally true and pure simplicity of her character. She was
not to be beguiled by the one, nor misguided by the other, from the
exquisite heart which was still worthy of Eden. When I was admitted