d was admitted by a little lean sly-looking old
man. He showed me the rooms--one for myself, and one for my servant.
Wretched as they were, the loneliness of the situation recommended them
to me. I made no objections; and I consented to pay the rent that was
asked. The one thing that remained to be done, in the interests of my
tranquillity, was to ascertain if any other persons lived the cottage
besides my new landlord. He wrote his answer to the question: 'Nobody but
my daughter.' With serious misgivings, I inquired if his daughter was
young. He wrote two fatal figures: '18'.

"Here was a discovery which disarranged all my plans, just as I had
formed them! The prospect of having a girl in the house, at the age
associated with my late disagreeable experience of the sensitive sex, was
more than my irritable temper could endure. I saw the old man going to
the window to take down the bill. Turning in a rage to stop him, I was
suddenly brought to a standstill by the appearance of a person who had
just entered the room.

"Was this the formidable obstacle to my tranquillity, which had prevented
me from taking the rooms that I had chosen? Yes! I knew the miller's
daughter intuitively. Delirium possessed me; my eyes devoured her; my
heart beat as if it would burst out of my bosom. The old man approached
me; he nodded, and grinned, and pointed to her. Did he claim his parental
interest in her? Did he mean that she belonged to him? No! she belonged
to me. She might be his daughter. She was My Fate.

"I don't know what it was in the girl that took me by storm. Nothing in
her look or her manner expressed the slightest interest in me. That
famous "beauty" of mine which had worked such ravages in the hearts of
other young women, seemed not even to attract her notice. When her father
put his hand to his ear, and told her (as I guessed) that I was deaf,
there was no pity in her splendid brown eyes; they expressed a momentary
curiosity, and nothing more. Possibly she had a hard heart? or perhaps
she took a dislike to me, at first sight? It made no difference to my
mind, either way. Was she the most beautiful creature I had ever seen?
Not even that excuse was to be made for me. I have met with women of her
dark complexion who were, beyond dispute, her superiors in beauty, and
have looked at them with indifference. Add to this, that I am one of the
men whom women offend if they are not perfectly well-dressed. The
miller's daughter was b