“At least,” she murmured, “Hugh can have nothing to fear from him, even though he will, I am fully convinced, omit no stratagem to gain my love, as the means of securing my hand and portion--the portion being rather a considerable item in the object he proposes to accomplish. His eye looks down searchingly into my heart, as though he would read and interpret its most delicate mysteries and fathom its secrets, that he may hold me in duress. Never! I defy him! He cannot, shall not, detect or decipher anything I may purpose to conceal. He has destined me for his prey, a golden fly, to be enmeshed in the entanglements of a web, every filament of which is too palpable in my eyes. Ha! there are two words to a bargain. It would be a delicious revenge to bring this schemer down upon his knees before me, actually and absolutely an abject wooer: so that when, with burning words and scorching tears, he pleaded his love, I might spurn him with my foot. I will do it! Already has he commenced, with consummate art, to make me think about him: he must exercise a wily skill indeed to make me love him! I will meet him upon his own battle-field; I will not appear to employ either art or skill, yet will I stake my happiness that I will compel him to love me with a passionate ardour, of which now he does not believe his soul capable. Ay, and when, with a whirlwind of pleadings, urgings, and fervid prayers, he implores me to bestow my heart upon him, then, in my moment of triumph, I will open up to his terrible discomfiture my full knowledge of the speculation which embraced my purse with my person, and laugh with derisive scorn, at so shallow an attempt to win and wear me--_me!_”
While that reference to herself yet trembled upon her lips, a thought rushed through her brain, and a flush of crimson spread itself over her fair neck and face, and then it subsided, and left her deadly pale.
At this moment, the postman’s well-known ring at the gate-bell, given with skilful force, resounded suddenly through the house. The noise made her start, and utter a faint scream. Her heart began to beat violently, while a strange presentiment seized her that the epistle which had arrived by this channel was for her. An emotion of dread oppressed her, for which she was at a loss to account, for she had but few correspondents, and among them there was not one whose communication ought to contain any matter to occasion her feelings of dread.