She was allied to rogues if not villains, I
knew; but then had she not cut all connection with them, dropped away
from them, planted her feet on new ground which they would never
invade? I commenced to cherish the idea. With this friendless,
grateful, unassuming protegee of mine for a wife, I would be as
little bound as might be. She would ask nothing, and I need give
nothing, beyond a home and the common attentions required of a
gentleman and a friend. Then she was not disagreeable, nor was her
beauty of a type to suggest the charms of her I had lost. None of the
graces of the haughty patrician lady whose lightest gesture was a
command, would appear in this humble girl, to mock and constrain me.
No, I should have a fair wife and an obedient one, but no vulgarized
shadow of Evelyn, thank God, or of any of her fashionably dressed
friends.
"Advanced thus far towards the end, I went to see Luttra. I had not
beheld her since the morning we parted at the door of that little
cottage in Vermont, and her presence caused me a shock. This, the
humble waif with the appealing grateful eyes I had expected to
encounter? this tall and slender creature with an aureola of golden
hair about a face that it was an education to behold! I felt a half
movement of anger as I surveyed her.
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