 here and there, until the last grain of
self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has this been my late
childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, to-night, of all nights
in my life!«
    »You might have been well married,« said her mother, »twenty times at least,
Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.«
    »No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,« she
answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy
pride, »shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure
him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him! When
he came to view me - perhaps to bid - he required to see the roll of my
accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have me show one of them, to
justify his purchase to his men, I require of him to say which he demands, and I
exhibit it. I will do no more. He makes the purchase of his own will, and with
his own sense of its worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never
disappoint him. I have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so
far as I have been able to prevent you.«
    »You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own mother.«
    »It seems so to me; stranger to me than you,« said Edith. »But my education
was completed long ago. I am too old now, and have fallen too low, by degrees,
to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to help myself. The germ of all
that purifies a woman's breast, and makes it true and good, has never stirred in
mine, and I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise myself.« There had
been a touching sadness in her voice, but it was gone, when she went on to say,
with a curled lip, »So, as we are genteel and poor, I am content that we should
be made rich by these means; all I say, is, I have kept the only purpose I have
had the strength to form - I had almost said the power, with you at my side,
Mother - and have not tempted this man on.«
    »This man! You speak,
