“George soon offered himself, and was terribly angry when I refused him. I believe he loved me, in his selfish way, better than he loved any other human creature. He would not give me up, nor allow me any peace from his persecutions. He dogged my steps whenever I went out, and if I spoke to any other man, it put him in a rage. I got to feeling that I was watched all the time; for sometimes he would laugh in his hateful way, and tell me of things he had seen when I thought him miles away.
“Twice, in particular, I remember of his being in a savage passion, and threatening me. It was after”—here the speaker’s voice, despite of her efforts to keep it steady, trembled and sunk—“he had seen me riding out in the carriage with Mrs. Moreland. He said those people were making a fool of me—that I was so set up, by their attentions, as to despise him. I told him that if I despised him, it was not for any such reason. It was because he behaved so ungentlemanly toward me, spying around me, when he had no business whatever with my affairs. That made him madder than ever, and he muttered words which I did not like. I told him I was not afraid of any mortal thing, and I didn’t think he would frighten me into marrying him. He said he would scare me yet, so that I would never get over it. I think he liked the spirit I showed; it seemed the more I tried to make him hate me, the more determined he was to pursue me. I don’t know how it was that I understood him so well, for in those days there had been nothing whispered against his character. Indeed, people didn’t know much about him; and he got himself into the good graces of some of the leading citizens of Blankville. He had told me something of his history; that is, that his family were English; that he, like myself, was an orphan; that, by dint of good luck, he had got a place in a doctor’s office in one of the towns in this State—one of those humble situations where he was expected to take care of the physician’s horse, drive the carriage, put up medicines, attend upon orders, and anything and everything. He was smart and quick; he had many hours of leisure when waiting behind the little counter, and these hours he spent in studying the doctor’s books, which he managed to get hold of one at a time. By these means, and by observing keenly the physician’s methods, his advice to patients who called at the office, and by reading and putting up prescriptions constantly, he picked up a really surprising smattering of science. Making up his mind to be a doctor, and to keep a drugstore (a profitable business, he knew) he had the energy to carry out his plans. How he finally obtained the capital to set up the little business in Blankville, I never understood, but I knew that he attended lectures on surgery, one winter, in New York, and was in a hospital there a short time. All this was fair enough, and proved him ambitious and energetic; but I did not like or trust him. There was something dark and hidden in the workings of his mind, from which I shrunk. I knew him, too, to be cruel. I could see it in his manner of treating children and animals; there was nothing he liked so well as to practice his half-learned art of surgery upon some unfortunate sufferer. The more he insisted on my liking him, the more I grew to dread him.
“Affairs were at this crisis when my cousin came from New York to pay my aunt a visit. Coming to our rooms almost every evening, of course he made her acquaintance immediately. For the purpose of making me jealous, he began to pay the most devoted attention to her. Nora was a pretty girl, with blue eyes and fair hair; an innocent-minded thing, not very sharp, apprenticed to a milliner
