University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment,
misery, death. There was a stern presentiment in her
waking thoughts, sufficiently keen and agonizing to inspire
such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The temperament
which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires
hope, is, at the same time, the source of those dark
images of thought and feeling, which appal it with the most
terrifying forms of fear;—and when Saturday and Saturday
night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens did not appear,
a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down,
continued to rise within her soul, which, without assuming
any real form or decisive speech, was yet suggestive of
complete overthrow and ruin. Her dreams were of this
complexion. She felt herself abandoned. Nor merely
abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had
even lost her pride. She could no longer meet the sneer
with scorn. She could no longer carry a lofty brow among
the little circle, who, once having envied, were now about
to despise her. To the impatient spirit, once so strong—
so insolent in its strength—what a pang—what a humiliation
was here! In her dreams she saw the young maidens
of the village stand aloof, as she had once stood
aloof from them:—she heard the senseless titter of their
laugh; and she had no courage to resent the impertinence.
Her courage was buried in her shame. No heart is so
cowardly as that which is conscious of guilt. Picture on

picture of this sort did her fancy present to her that night;
and when she awoke the next morning, the sadness of her
soul had taken the colour of a deep and brooding misanthropy.
Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her
resolution came only from despair; and resolution from
such a source, we well know, is usually only powerful
against itself.

It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal
belief in a controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men,
however abased, scornful of divine and human law, invariably,
in their moments of desperation, call upon God.
Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The outlaw,
as the fatal bullet pierces his breast—the infidel, sinking
and struggling in the water,—the cold stony heart of the
murderer, the miser, the assassin of reputation as of life—
all cry out upon God in the unexpected paroxysms of
death. Let us hope that the instinct which prompts this
involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its
blessings. It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of
the youthful heart, has lived without thought or prayer—a
tumultuous life of uproar and riot,—a long carnival of the
passions—the warm blood suppressing the cool thought,
and making the reckless heart impatient of consideration.
Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart—let the
blood become stagnant with disease;—and the involuntary
appeal is to that God, of whom before there was no thought.
We turn to him as to a father who is equally strong to help
and glad to preserve us.

Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived
without God. Her God was in her own heart; beheld by
the lurid fires of an intense, unmethodized ambition. Her
own strength,—or rather the persuasion of her own
strength,—had been so great, that hitherto she had seen
no necessity for appealing to any other source of power.
She might now well begin to distrust that strength. She
did so. Her desperation was not of that sort utterly to
shut out hope;—and while there is hope, there is yet a
moral assurance that the worst is not yet—perhaps not to
be. But she was humbled—not enough, perhaps, but
enough to feel the necessity of calling in her allies. She
dropped by her bedside, in prayer, when she arose that
morning. We do not say that she prayed for forgiveness,
without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of

us know how to simplify our demands upon the Deity to
this one. We pray that he may assist us in this or that
grand speculation. The planter for a great crop—the
banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.—the
lawyer for more copious fees, the parson for an increase of
salary. How few pray for mercy—forgiveness for the
past—strength to sustain the struggling conscience in the
future. Poor Margaret was no wiser, no better, than the
rest of us. She prayed,—silly woman!—that Alfred Stevens
might keep his engagement!

He did not! That day she was to be married! She had
some reference to this in making her toilet that morning.
The garments which she put on were all of white. A
white rose gleamed palely from amidst the raven hair upon
her brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How beautiful!
But alas! the garb she wore,—the pale sweet flower
on her forehead,—they were mockeries;—the emblems of
that purity of soul—that innocence of heart, which were
gone,—gone for ever! She shuddered as she beheld the
flower, and meditated this thought. Silently she took the
flower from her forehead, and as if it were precious as that
lost jewel of which it reminded her, she carefully placed it
away in her toilet-case. Yet her beauty was heightened
rather than diminished. Margaret Cooper was beautiful
after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame
rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry,
and so formed for grace;—with a power of muscle more
than common among women, which, by inducing activity,
made her movements as easy as they were graceful;—
with an eye bright, like the morning star, and with a depth
of expression, darkly clear, like that of the same golden
orb at night;—with a face exquisitely oval; a mouth of
great sweetness; cheeks on which the slightest dash of
hue from the red, red rose in June, might be seen to come
and go, under the slightest promptings of the active heart
within;—a brow of great height and corresponding expansion;—with
a bust that impressed you with a sense of the
maternal strength which might be harboured there,—even
as the swollen bud gives promises of the full bosomed luxuriance
of the flower when it opens;—add to these, a lofty
carriage, a look where the quickened spirit seems ever
ready for utterance; a something of eager solemnity in her
speech; and a play of expression on her lips which, if the

brow were less lofty and the eye less keenly bright, might
be a smile;—and you have some idea of that noble and
lovely temple, on which fires of lava had been raised by
an unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on
which dreads the light—shrinks from exposure,—and
trembles to be seen by the very Deity whose favour it yet
seeks in prayer and apprehension. These beauties of
person as we have essayed, though most feebly to describe
them, were enhanced, rather than lessened, by that air of
anxiety by which they were now overcast. Her step was
no longer free. It was marked by an unwonted timidity.
Her glance was no longer confident; and when she looked
round, upon the faces of the young village maidens, it was
seen that her lip trembled and moved, but no longer with
scorn. If the truth were told, she now envied the meanest
of those maidens that security which her lack of beauty
had guaranteed. She, the scorner of all around her, now
envied the innocence of the very meanest of her companions.
Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience
upon her heart. What would she not have given
to be like one of them? She dared not take her place, in
the church, among them. It was a dread that kept her
back. Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty
girl felt that she might be repulsed—that her frailty might
make itself known—must make itself known—and she
would be driven with shame from that communion with
the pure to which she had no longer any claim! She sunk
into one of the humblest seats in the church, drawing her
reluctant mother into the lowly place beside her.

John Cross did not that day address himself to her case:
but sin has a family similitude amongst all its members.
There is an unmistakeable likeness, which runs through
the connexion. If the preacher speaks fervently to one
sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all the rest:
and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea of
singling out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there
was a whispering devil at her elbow that kept up a continual
commentary upon what he said, filling her ears with
a direct application of every syllable to her own peculiar
instance.

“See you not,” said the demon, “that every eye is
turned upon you? He sees into your soul—he knows your
secret. He declares it, as you hear, aloud, with a voice

of thunder, to all the congregation. Do you not perceive
that you sit alone—that every body shrinks from your
side—that your miserable old mother alone sits with you—
that the eyes of some watch you with pity, but more with
indignation? Look at the young damsels—late your companions—they
are your companions no longer. They
triumph in your shame. Their titter is only suppressed
because of the place in which they are. They ask—`Is
this the maiden who was so wise, so strong—who scorned
us—scorned us, indeed!—and was not able to baffle the
serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they
laugh! Well, indeed, they may. It is very laughable,
Margaret—not less laughable and amusing than strange!—
that you should have fallen!—so easily—so blindly, and
not even to suspect what every one else was sure of! Oh!
Margaret, Margaret! Can it be true? Who will believe in
your wit, now—your genius—your beauty? Smutched
and smutted! Poor, weak, degraded! If there is pity for
you, Margaret, it is full of mockery too—it is a pity that is
full of bitterness. You should now cast yourself down
and cover yourself with ashes, and cry `wo is me,' and
call upon the rocks and the hills to cover you!”

Such was the voice in her soul, which to her senses,
seemed like that of some jibing demon at her elbow.
Margaret tried to pray—to expel him by prayer; but the
object of his mockery had not been attained. She could
not surrender herself entirely to the chastener. She was
scourged but not humbled; and the language of the demon
provoked defiance, not humility. Her proud spirit rose
once more against the pressure put upon it. Her bright,
dazzling eye flashed in scorn upon the damsels whom she
now fancied to be actually tittering—scarce able to suppress
their laughter—at her obvious disgrace. On John Cross
she fixed her fearless eye, like that of some fallen angel,
still braving the chastener, whom he cannot contend with.
A strange strength—for even sin has its strength for a season—came
to her relief in that moment of fiendish mockery.
The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her
heart once more swelled with pride. Her soul once more
insisted on its ascendancy. She felt, though she did not
say,—“even as I am, overthrown, robbed of my treasure,
I feel that I am superior to these. I feel that I have
strength against the future. If they are pure and innocent,

it is not because of their greater strength, but their greater
obscurity. If I am overthrown by the tempter, it was because
I was the more worthy object of overthrow. In their
littleness they live; if I am doomed to the shaft, at least, it
will be as the eagle is doomed! It will be while soaring
aloft—while aiming for the sun—while grasping at the
very bolt by which I am destroyed!”

Such was the consolation offered by the twin demons of
pride and vanity. The latter finds its aliment in the heart
which it too completely occupies, even from those circumstances
which, in other eyes, make its disgrace and
weakness. The sermon which had touched her sin had
not subdued it. Perhaps, no sermon, no appeal, however
powerful and touching, could, at that moment, have had
power over her. The paroxysm of her first consciousness
of ruin had not yet passed off. The condition of mind
was not yet reached in which an appeal could be felt. As
in the case of physical disease, so with that of the mind
and heart, there is a period when it is neither useful nor
prudent to administer the medicines which are yet most
nesessary to safety. The judicious physician will wait for
the moment when the frame is prepared—when the pulse
is somewhat subdued—before he tries the most powerful
remedy. The excitement of the wrong which she had
suffered was still great in her bosom. It was necessary
that she should have repose. That excitement was maintained
by the expectation that Stevens would yet make his
appearance. Her eye, at intervals, wandered over the
assembly in search of him. The demon at her elbow
understood her quest.

“He will not come;” it said—“you look in vain. The
girls follow your eyes—they behold your disappointment
—they laugh at your credulity. If he leads any to the
altar, think you it will be one whom he could command at
pleasure without any such conditions—one, who, in her
wild passions and disordered vanity, could so readily yield
to his desires, without demanding any corresponding sacrifice?
Margaret, they laugh now at those weaknesses of a
mind which they once feared if not honoured. They
wonder, now, that they could have been so deceived. If
they do not laugh aloud, Margaret, it is because they
would spare your shame. Indeed, indeed, they pity
you!”

The head of the desperate, but still haughty woman,
was now more proudly uplifted, and her eyes shot forth
yet fiercer fires of indignation. What a conflict was going
on in her bosom. Her cheeks glowed with the strife—
her breast heaved; with difficulty she maintained her seat
inflexibly, and continued, without other signs of discomposure,
until the service was concluded. Her step was more
stately than ever as she walked from church; and while
her mother lingered behind to talk with Brother Cross, and
to exchange the sweetest speeches with the widow Thackeray
and others, she went on alone,—seeing none, heeding
none,—dreading to meet any face lest it should wear a
smile and look the language in which the demon at her
side still dealt. He still clung to her, with the tenacity of
a fiendish purpose. He mocked her with her shame,
goading her, with dart upon dart, of every sort of mockery.
Truly did he mutter in her ears—

“Stevens has abandoned you. Never was child, before
yourself, so silly as to believe such a promise as he made
you. Do you doubt?—do you still hope? It is madness?
Why came he not yesterday—last night—to-day? He is
gone. He has abandoned you. You are not only alone
—you are lost! lost for ever!”

The tidings of this unsolicited confident were confirmed
the next day, by the unsuspecting John Cross. He came
to visit Mrs. Cooper and her daughter among the first of
his parishioners. He had gathered from the villagers
already that Stevens had certainly favoured Miss Cooper
beyond all the rest of the village damsels. Indeed, it was
now generally bruited that he was engaged to her in marriage.
Though the worthy preacher had very stoutly
resisted the suggestions of Mr. Calvert, and the story of
Ned Hinkley, he was yet a little annoyed by them; and he
fancied that, if Stevens were, indeed, engaged to Margaret,
she, or perhaps the old lady, might relieve his anxiety by
accounting for the absence of his protégé. The notion of
Brother John was, that, having resolved to marry the
maiden, he had naturally gone home to apprise his parents
and to make the necessary preparations. But this conjecture
brought with it a new anxiety. It now, for the
first time, seemed something strange that Stevens had
never declared to himself, or to any body else who his
parents were—what they were—where they were—what

business they pursued; or any thing about them. Of his
friends, they knew as little. The simple old man had
never thought of these things, until the propriety of such
inquiries was forced upon him by the conviction that they
would now be made in vain. The inability to answer
them, when it was necessary that an answer should be
found, was a commentary upon his imprudence which
startled the good old man not a little. But, in the confident
hope that a solution of the difficulty could be afforded
by the sweetheart or the mother, he proceeded to her
cottage. Of course, Calvert, in his communication to him,
had forborne those darker conjectures which he could not
help but entertain; and his simple auditor, unconscious
himself of any thought of evil, had never himself formed
any such.

Margaret Cooper was in her chamber when Brother
Cross arrived. She had lost that elasticity of temper
which would have carried her out at that period among
the hills in long rambles filled with those wild, wooing
companions, which gambol along the paths of poetic contemplation.
The old man opened his stores of scandal to
Mrs. Cooper with little or no hesitation. He told her all
that Calvert had said, all that Ned Hinkley had fancied
himself to have heard, and all the village tattle touching
the engagement supposed to exist between Stevens and
her daughter.

“Of course, Sister Cooper,” said he, “I believe nothing
of this sort against the youth. I should be sorry to
think it of one whom I plucked as a brand from the burning.
I hold Brother Stevens to be a wise young man and
a pious; and truly I fear, as indeed I learn, that there is
in the mind of Ned Hinkley a bitter dislike to the youth,
because of some quarrel which Brother Stevens is said
to have had with William Hinkley. This dislike hath
made him conceive evil things of Brother Stevens and to
misunderstand and to pervert some conversation which he
hath overhead which Stevens hath had with his companion.
Truly, indeed, I think that Alfred Stevens is a
worthy youth of whom we shall hear a good account.”

“And I think so too, Brother Cross. Brother Stevens
will be yet a burning and a shining light in the church.
There is a malice against him; and I think I know the
cause, Brother Cross.”

“Ah! this will be a light unto our footsteps, Sister
Cooper.”

“Thou knowest, Brother Cross,” resumed the old lady
in a subdued tone but with a loftier elevation of eye-brows
and head,—“thou knowest the great beauty of my daughter
Margaret?”

“The maiden is comely, sister, comely among the
maidens; but beauty is grass. It is a flower which blooms
at morning and is cut down in the evening. It withereth
on the stalk where it bloomed, until men turn from it with
sickening and with sorrow, remembering what it hath been.
Be not boastful of thy daughter's beauty, Sister Cooper—
it is the beauty of goodness alone which dieth not.”

“But said I not, Brother Cross, of her wisdom, and her
wit, as well as her beauty?” replied the old lady with
some little pique. “I was forgetful of much, if I spoke
only of the beauty of person which Margaret Cooper
surely possesseth, and which the eyes of blindness itself
might see.”

“Dross, dross all, Sister Cooper. The wit of man is a
flash which blindeth and maketh dark; and the wisdom of
man is a vain thing. The one crackleth like thorns beneath
the pot—the other stifleth the heart and keepeth
down the soul from her true flight. I count the wit and
wisdom of this daughter even as I count her beauty.
She hath all, I think,—as they are known to and regarded
by men. But all is nothing. Beauty hath a day's life like
the butterfly; wit shineth like the sudden flash of the
lightning, leaving only the cloud behind it; and oh! for
the vain wisdom of man which makes him vain and unsteady—likely
to falter—liable to fall—rash in his judgment—erring
in his aims—blind to his duty—wilful in
his weakness—insolent to his fellow—presumptuous in the
sight of God. Talk not to me of worldly wisdom. It is
the foe to prayer and meekness. The very fruit of the
tree which brought sin and death into the world. Thy
daughter is fair to behold—very fair among the maidens of
our flock—none fairer, none so fair: God hath otherwise
blessed her with a bright mind and a quick intelligence;
but I think not she is wise to salvation. No, no! she hath
not yearned to the holy places of the tabernacle, unless it
be that Brother Stevens hath been more blessed in his
ministry than I!”

“And he hath!” exclaimed the mother. “I tell you,
Brother John, the heart of Margaret Cooper is no longer
what it was. It is softened. The toils of Brother Stevens
have not been in vain. Blessed young man, no
wonder they hate and defame him. He hath had a power
over Margaret Cooper such as man never had before; and
it is for this reason that Bill Hinkley and Ned conspired
against him, first to take his life, and then to speak evil of
his deeds. They beheld the beauty of my daughter, and
they looked on her with famishing eyes. She sent them
a-packing, I tell you. But this youth, Brother Stevens,
found favour in her heart. They beheld the two as they
went forth together. Ah! Brother John, it is the sweetest
sight to behold two young, loving people walk forth in
amity—born, as it would seem, for each other; both so
tall, and young, and handsome; walking together with
such smiles, as if there was no sorrow in the world; as if
there was nothing but flowers and sweetness on the path;
as if they could see nothing but one another; and as if
there were no enemies looking on. It did my heart good
to see them, Brother Cross; they always looked so happy
with one another.”

“And you think, Sister Cooper, that Brother Stevens
hath agreed to take Margaret to wife?”

“She hath not told me this yet, but in truth, I think it
hath very nigh come to that.”

“Where is she?”

“In her chamber.”

“Call her hither, Sister Cooper; let us ask of her the
truth.”

Margaret Cooper was summoned, and descended with
slow steps and an unwilling spirit to meet their visiter.

“Daughter,” said the good old man, taking her hand, and
leading her to a seat, “thou art, even as thy mother sayest,
one of exceeding beauty. Few damsels have ever met mine
eyes with a beauty like to thine. No wonder the young men
look on thee with eyes of love; but let not the love of
youth betray thee. The love of God is the only love
that is precious to the heart of wisdom.”

Thus saying, the old man gazed on her with as much
admiration as was consistent with the natural coldness of
his temperament, his years, and his profession. His
address, so different from usual, had a soothing effect upon

her. A sigh escaped her, but she said nothing. He then
proceeded to renew the history which had been given to
him and which he had already detailed to her mother. She
heard him with patience, in spite of all his interpolations
from Scripture, his ejaculations, his running commentary
upon the narrative, and the numerous suggestive topics
which took him from episode to episode, until the story
seemed interminably mixed up in the digression. But
when he came to that portion which related to the adventure
of Ned Hinkley, to his espionage, the conference of
Stevens with his companion,—then she started,—then her
breathing became suspended, then quickened,—then again
suspended—and then, so rapid in its rush, that her emotion
became almost too much for her powers of suppression.
But she did suppress it, with a power, a resolution, not
often paralleled among men—seldom among women.
After the first spasmodic acknowledgment given by her
surprise, she listened with comparative calmness. She,
alone, had the key to that conversation. She, alone, knew
its terrible signification. She knew that Ned Hinkley
was honest—was to be believed—that he was too simple,
and too sincere, for any such invention; and, sitting with
hands clasped upon that chair—the only attitude which
expressed the intense emotion which she felt—she gazed
with unembarrassed eye upon the face of the speaker,
while every word which he spoke went like some keen,
death-giving instrument into her heart. The whole dreadful
history of the villany of Stevens, her irreparable ruin
—was now clearly intelligible. The mocking devil at her
elbow had spoken nothing but the truth. She was indeed
the poor victim of a crafty villain. In the day of her
strength and glory she had fallen—fallen, fallen, fallen!

“Why am I called to hear this?” she demanded with
singular composure.

The old man and the mother explained in the same
breath—that she might reveal the degree of intercourse
which had taken place between them, and, if possible, account
for the absence of her lover. That, in short, she
might refute the malice of enemies and establish the falsehood
of their suggestions.

“You wish to know if I believe this story of Ned
Hinkley?”

“Even so, my daughter.”

“Then, I do!”

“Ha!—what is it you say, Margaret?”

“The truth.”

“What?” demanded the preacher, “you cannot surely
mean that Brother Stevens hath been a wolf in sheep's
clothing—that he hath been a hypocrite.”

“Alas!” thought Margaret Cooper—“have I not been
my own worst enemy—did I not know him to be this
from the first?”

Her secret reflection remained, however, unspoken.
She answered the demand of John Cross.

“I believe that Alfred Stevens is all that he is charged
to be—a hypocrite—a wolf in sheep's clothing!—I see no
reason to doubt the story of Ned Hinkley. He is an
honest youth.”

The old lady was in consternation. The preacher
aghast and confounded.

“Tell me, Margaret,” said the former, “hath he not
engaged himself to you? Did he not promise—is he not
sworn to be your husband?”

“I have already given you my belief. I see no reason
to say any thing more. What more do you need? Is he
not gone—fled—has he not failed—”

She paused abruptly, while a purple flush went over her
face. She rose to retire.

“Margaret!” exclaimed the mother.

“My daughter!” said John Cross.

“Speak out what you know—tell us all—”

“No! I will say no more. You know enough already.
I tell you, I believe Alfred Stevens to be a hypocrite and a
villain. Is not that enough? What is it to you whether
he is so or not? What is it to me, at least? You do not
suppose that it is any thing to me? Why should you?
What should he be? I tell you he is nothing to me—
nothing—nothing—nothing! Villain or hypocrite, or what
not—he is no more to me than the earth on which I tread.
Let me hear no more about him, I pray you. I would
not hear his name! Are there not villains enough in the
world, that you should think and speak of one only?”

With these vehement words she left the room, and
hurried to her chamber. She stopped suddenly before the
mirror.

“And it is thus!” she exclaimed—“and I am—”

The mother by this time had followed her into the
room.

“What is the meaning of this, Margaret?—tell me!”
cried the old woman in the wildest agitation.

“What should it be, mother? Look at me!—in my
eyes—do they not tell you? Can you not read?”

“I see nothing—I do not understand you, Margaret.”

“Indeed! but you shall. I thought my face would tell
you without my words. I see it there, legible enough,
myself. Look again!—spare me if you can—spare your
own ears—the necessity of hearing me speak!”

“You terrify me, Margaret—I fear you are out of your
mind.”

“No! no! that need not be your fear; nor, were it
true, would it be a fear of mine. It might be something
to hope—to pray for. It might bring relief. Hear me,
since you will not see. You ask me why I believe Stevens
to be a villain. I know it.”

“Ha! how know it!”

“How! How should I know it? Well, I see that I
must speak. Listen then. You bade me seek and make a
conquest of him, did you not? Do not deny it, mother—
you did.”

“Well, if I did?”

“I succeeded! Without trying, I succeeded! He declared
to me his love—he did!—he promised to marry
me. He was to have married me yesterday—to have met
me in church and married me. John Cross was to have
performed the ceremony. Well! you saw me there—you
saw me in white—the dress of a bride!—Did he come?
Did you see him there? Did you see the ceremony performed?”

“No, surely not—you know without asking.”

“I know without asking!—surely I do!—but look
you, mother—do you think that conquests are to be made,
hearts won, loves confessed, pledges given, marriage-day
fixed—do these things take place, as matters of pure form?
Is there no sensation—no agitation—no beating and violence
about the heart—in the blood—in the brain! I tell
you there is—a blinding violence, a wild, stormy sensation,
fondness, forgetfulness, madness! I say, madness!
madness! madness!”

“Oh, my daughter, what can all this mean? Speak
calmly, be deliberate!”

“Calm, deliberate! What a monster if I could be! But
I am not mad now. I will tell you what it means. It
means that, in taking captive Alfred Stevens—in winning
a lover—securing that pious young man—there was some
difficulty, some peril. Would you believe it?—there were
some privileges which he claimed. He took me in his
arms. He held me panting to his breast. His mouth
filled mine with kisses—”

“No more, do not say more, my child!”

“Ay, more! more! much more! I tell you—then came
blindness and madness, and I was dishonoured—made a
woman before I was made a wife! Ruined, lost, abused,
despised, abandoned! Ha! ha! ha! no marriage ceremony,
though I went to the church. No bridegroom
there, though he promised to come. Preacher, church,
bride, all present, yet no wedding. Ha! ha! ha! How
do I know!—Good reason for it, good reason—Ha! ha!
—ah!”

The paroxysm terminated in a fit. The unhappy girl
fell to the floor as if stricken in the forehead. The blood
gushed from her nostrils, and she lay insensible in the
presence of the terrified and miserable mother.