O Julia! take care.  Many another woman has jumped off that precipice!

And she would escape from her mother.  The indications of affection adroitly given by Humphreys were all remembered now.  She could have him, and she would.  He would take her to Cincinnati.  She would have her revenge all around.  I am sorry to show you my heroine in this mood.  But the fairest climes are sometimes subject to the fiercest hurricanes, the frightfulest earthquakes!

After an hour the room seemed hot.  She pulled back the chintz curtain and pushed up the window.  The blue-grass in the pasture looked cool as it drank the heavy dews.  She climbed through the window on to the long, old-fashioned upper porch.  She sat down upon an old-fashioned settee with rockers, and began to rock.  The motion relieved her nervousness and fanned her hot cheeks.  Yes, she would accept the first respectable lover that offered.  She would go to the city with Humphreys, if he asked her.  It is only fair to say that Julia did not at all consider—­she was not in a temper to consider—­what a marriage with Humphreys implied.  She only thought of it on two sides—­the revenge upon August and Betsey, and the escape from a thralldom now grown more bitter than death.  True, her conscience was beginning to awaken, and to take up arms against her resolve.  But nothing could be plainer.  In marrying Mr. Humphreys she should marry a friend, the only friend she had.  In marrying him she would satisfy her mother, and was it not her duty to sacrifice something to her mother’s happiness, perhaps her mother’s life?

[Illustration:  TEMPTED.]

Yes, yes, Julia, a false spirit of self-sacrifice is another path over the cliff!  In such a mood as this all paths lead into the abyss.

Her mind was made up.  She braced her will against all the relentings of her heart.  She wished that Humphreys, who had indirectly declared his love so often, were there to offer at once.  She would accept him immediately, and then the whole neighborhood should not say that she had been deserted by a Dutchman.  For in her anger she found her mother’s epithets expressive.

He was there!  Was it the devil that planned it?  Does he plan all those opportunities for wrong that are so sure to offer themselves?  Humphreys, having led a life that turned night into day, sat at the farther end of the long upper porch, smoking his cigar, waiting a bed-time nearer to the one to which he was accustomed.

Did he suspect the struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson?  Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time reached high-water mark?  Did he divine this from seeing her there?  He rose and started in through the door of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except the window.  But this was a feint.  He turned back and sat himself down upon the farther end of the settee from Julia.  He understood human nature perfectly, and had had long practice in making gradual approaches.  He