"She shuddered as with a terrible chill.
"'Listen, Ida,' she said, in a strained, awful voice: 'Her nephew is such a horrid creature, that to be hated he needs but to be seen. He is a hunchback—and—an idiot—has a touch of insanity about him. Except the first few years of his life, he has been confined in an asylum. This nephew has a bachelor uncle, who has declared his intention to make the young man his heir if he marries when he is twenty-one. Otherwise the great fortune goes to another branch of the family. They would make a victim of you, wreck your beautiful young life for their own ambitious aims. It will be six months before he is of age. But the marriage shall never be, my darling. Your young life shall never be sacrificed by these inhuman Shylocks. When the hour comes, we will die together.'
"One day my mother met me with a white, awful face.
"'Mrs. Deering's nephew has arrived with a valet!' she cried, under her breath.
"'But the six months are not up, mother," I cried. 'It wants a fortnight to that time.'
"'He has come to stay until you make your decision.'
"Oh, God! the horror of it! Death a thousand times over would have been preferable to that.
"How could I stand at the altar and promise to obey a creature the very sight of whom filled me with disgust and terror?
"I fled through the village, not daring to look behind me, and never stopping until I reached the telegraph office.
"It was little wonder that I made strange mistakes during the hour that followed.