“We were very poor, but grandmother was foolishly, inconsistently proud, and though compelled to sew for our daily bread, she dressed me in a style incompatible with our poverty, and contrived to send me to school.  Finally her eyes failed, and with destitution staring open-jawed upon us, she reluctantly consented to do the washing and mending for three college boys.  She was well educated, and inordinately vain of her blood, and how this galling necessity humiliated her!  We of course could employ no servant, and once when she was confined to her bed by inflammatory rheumatism, I was sent to the college to carry the clothes washed and ironed that week.  It was the only time I was ever permitted to cross the campus, but it sufficed to wreck my life.  On that luckless day I first met Cuthbert Laurance, then only nineteen, while I was not yet fifteen.  Think of it, my darling; three years younger than you are now, and you a mere child still!  While he paid me the money due, he looked at and talked to me.  Oh, my daughter! my daughter! as I see you at this instant, with your violet eyes, watching me from under those slender, black arches, it seems the very same regular, aristocratic, beautiful face that met me that wretched afternoon, beneath the branching elms that shaded the campus!  So courteous, so winning, so chivalric, so indescribably handsome did he present himself to my admiring eyes.  I was young, pretty, an innocent, ignorant, foolish child, and I yielded to the fascination he exerted.

“Day by day the charm deepened, and he sought numerous opportunities of seeing me again; gave me books, brought me flowers, became the king of my waking thoughts, the god of my dreams.  In a cottage near us lived a widow, Mrs. Peterson; whose only child Peleg, a rough overgrown lad, was a journeyman carpenter, and quite skilful in carving wooden figures.  We had grown up together, and he seemed particularly fond of and kind to me, rendering me many little services which a stalwart man can perform for a delicate petted young creature such as I was then.

“As grandmother’s infirmity increased, and her strict supervision relaxed, I met Cuthbert more frequently, but as yet without her knowledge; and gradually be won my childish heart completely.  His father, General Rene Laurance, was a haughty wealthy planter residing in one of the Middle States, and Cuthbert was his only child, the pride of his heart and home.  Those happy days seem a misty dream to me now, I have so utterly outgrown the faith that lent a glory to that early time.  Cuthbert assured me of his affection, swore undying allegiance to me; and like many other silly, trusting, inexperienced, doomed young fools, I believed every syllable that he whispered in my ears.