I required him
to concede to me the right of seeing Margaret every day--leaving all
arrangements of time to depend on his own convenience. After the due
number of objections, he reluctantly acquiesced in my demand. I was
bound by no engagement whatever, limiting the number of my visits to
Margaret; and I let him see at the outset, that I was now ready in my
turn, to impose conditions on him, as he had already imposed them on me.

Accordingly, it was settled that Margaret and I were to meet every day.
I usually saw her in the evening. When any alteration in the hour of my
visit took place, that alteration was produced by the necessity (which
we all recognised alike) of avoiding a meeting with any of Mr. Sherwin's
friends.

Those portions of the day or the evening which I spent with Margaret,
were seldom passed altogether in the Elysian idleness of love. Not
content with only enumerating his daughter's school-accomplishments to
me at our first interview, Mr. Sherwin boastfully referred to them again
and again, on many subsequent occasions; and even obliged Margaret to
display before me, some of her knowledge of languages--which he never
forgot to remind us had been lavishly paid for out of his own pocket. It
was at one of these exhibitions that the idea occurred to me of making
a new pleasure for myself out of Margaret's society, by teaching her
really to appreciate and enjoy the literature which she had evidently
hitherto only studied as a task. My fancy revelled by anticipation in
all the delights of such an employment as this. It would be like acting
the story of Abelard and Heloise over again--reviving all the poetry and
romance in which those immortal love-studies of old had begun, with none
of the guilt and none of the misery that had darkened their end.

I had a definite purpose, besides, in wishing to assume the direction of
Margaret's studies. Whenever the secret of my marriage was revealed, my
pride was concerned in being able to show my wife to every one, as the
all-sufficient excuse for any imprudence I might have committed for her
sake. I was determined that my father, especially, should have no other
argument against her than the one ungracious argument of her birth--that
he should see her, fitted by the beauty of her mind, as well as by all
her other beauties, for the highest station that society could offer.
The thought of this gave me fresh ardour in my project; I assumed my new
duties without delay, an