A private parlor had been engaged, and in this the ceremony of marriage was to take place.  This parlor adjoined a chamber, in which Caroline awaited, with a trembling heart, the issue of events.  It was now, for the first time, as she was about taking the final and irretrievable step, that her resolution began to fail her.  Her father’s anger, the grief of her mother, the unknown state upon which she was about entering, all came pressing upon her thoughts with a sense of realization such as she had not known before.

Doubts as to the propriety of what she was about doing, came fast upon her mind.  In the nearness of the approaching event, she could look upon it stripped of its halo of romance.  During the two days that she had been with Lawson, she had seen him in states of absent thought, when the true quality of his mind wrote itself out upon his face so distinctly that even a dim-sighted one could read; and more than once she had felt an inward shrinking from him that was irrepressible.  Weak and foolish as she was, she was yet pure-minded; and though in the beginning she did not, because her heart was overlaid with frivolity, perceive the sphere of his impurity, yet now, as the moment was near at hand when there was to be a marriage-conjunction, she began to feel this sphere as something that suffocated her spirit.  At length, in the agitation of contending thoughts and emotions, the heart of the poor girl failed her, till, in the utter abandonment of feeling, she gave way to a flood of tears and commenced wringing her hands.  At this moment, having arranged with the clergyman to begin the ceremony forthwith, Lawson entered her room, and, to his surprise, saw her in tears.

“Oh, Charles!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands and extending them towards him, “Take me home to my father!  Oh, take me home to my father!”

Lawson was confounded at such an unexpected change in Caroline.  “You shall go to your father the moment the ceremony is over,” he replied; “Come!  Mr. B——­ is all ready.”

“Oh, no, no!  Take me now!  Take me now!” returned the poor girl in an imploring voice.  And she sat before the man who had tempted her from the path of safety, weeping, and quivering like a leaf in the wind.

“Caroline!  What has come over you!” said Lawson, in deep perplexity.  “This is only a weakness.  Come!  Nerve your heart like a brave, good girl!  Come!  It will soon be over.”

And he bent down and kissed her wet cheek, while she shrunk from him with an involuntary dread.  But, he drew his arm around her waist, and almost forced her to rise.

“There now!  Dry your tears!” And he placed his handkerchief to her eyes.  “It is but a moment of weakness, Caroline,—­of natural weakness.”

As he said this, he was pressing her forward towards the door of the apartment where the clergyman (such clergymen disgrace their profession) awaited their appearance.

“Charles?” said Caroline, with a suddenly constrained calmness—­“do you love me?”