"I expected it," said she to his proposals, "I am used to it—I am almost every day exposed to such tempting offers, to escape a life of poverty—I have ceased to look upon them as insulting—nature, and fashion, and the state of society, are such in this city, that a girl with an unfortunate face like mine, must fall, unless she is possessed of such fortitude as but few young girls are naturally gifted with. You may ask me that question every day; every day you may, if you feel like wounding the feelings of a poor girl, repeat your question, and every day you will get the same answer."
"Athalia, forgive me. Oh, forgive me; I never will repeat the question again; whether you forgive me or not, you need have no fear of that."
What a failure then had his sisters made. They did just what they did not intend to do; they led Walter to think, that his family would approve a match with one so virtuous, so beautiful, so lovely, even if she was a sewing girl, and he began to build castles in the air upon this foundation. They were very sandy, and a storm was approaching that would soon beat upon the frail walls, and like all such fabrics, down they will tumble.
CHAPTER IX.
ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL.
"One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,
That may succeed as its inheritor."
"Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid, as in woman."
Marriage, death, bankruptcy, poverty, sin, and, finally, "plucked like a brand from the burning," are the contents, the introduction, and peroration, of this chapter. If you are satisfied at a glance, you can pass on, the filling up, is but the shading of the sketch. But if you are curious to know who marries, who dies, and who does worse—read.
"It is but a step from the palace to the tomb," yet the road sometimes seems a long and dreary one, leading through strange, dark places.