for the
money-lender on the consideration of wealth. Vesta's own mother, too,
who should have known her well, had twice hinted the same. Even the
inoffensive Ellenora had accepted that idea, or another kin to it, and
Rhoda Holland had remembered that her uncle was the richest of
bridegrooms in Princess Anne. Vesta felt the injustice, but said to
herself:

"I must make the sacrifice complete, and incur any harsh judgment it may
bear. I see that I shall be driven for sympathy to the last place in the
world I anticipated: to my husband's heart. Yes, there is something
besides love in marriage: if I cannot love him, he can understand me."

Vesta had come to a place all come to who volunteer an act of great
sacrifice--to have it put upon a low motive from the lower plane of
sacrifice in many otherwise kind people. We give our money to an
institution of charity, and it is said that it was for notoriety, or
self-seeking, or at the expense of our kin. We lead a forlorn hope in
politics, or some other arena, to establish a cause or assist a
principle, with the certain result of defeat, and we are said to be
jealous or malignant. Perhaps we make a book to illustrate some old
region off the highways of observation, drawn to it by kindred strings
or early patterings, and the politician there regards it as an attack,
the old family fossil as an intrusion, the very youth as if it were a
queer and gratuitous thing from such an outer source. So we wince a
little, but feel that it was necessary to be misunderstood to complete
the sacrifice.

The feeling of despondency increased after the little company separated,
and Vesta went to her room and laid herself upon her still maiden bed.
She had said her prayer and asked the approval of God, but her nervous
system, under the tension of almost two days' excitement and events such
as she had never known, was alert and could not fall to slumber. Old
passages of Testament lore haunted her soul, such as: "Thy desire shall
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" "A man shall leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." She began to see
that marriage was not merely the solution of a family trouble, and the
giving of her body as a hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a
rendition of all her liberty, even the liberty of sympathy and of
sorrow, to the man to whom she must cleave.

In marrying him she had left friendship, father and mother, everything,
at a g