inaries. I cannot do better.

And first as to Achsa Fielding,--to describe this woman.

To recount, in brief, so much of her history as has come to my knowledge
will best account for that zeal, almost to idolatry, with which she has,
ever since I thoroughly knew her, been regarded by me.

Never saw I one to whom the term _lovely_ more truly belonged. And yet
in stature she is too low; in complexion dark and almost sallow; and her
eyes, though black and of piercing lustre, have a cast which I cannot
well explain. It lessens without destroying their lustre and their force
to charm; but all personal defects are outweighed by her heart and her
intellect. There is the secret of her power to entrance the soul of the
listener and beholder. It is not only when she sings that her utterance
is musical. It is not only when the occasion is urgent and the topic
momentous that her eloquence is rich and flowing. They are always so.

I had vowed to love her and serve her, and been her frequent visitant,
long before I was acquainted with her past life. I had casually picked
up some intelligence, from others, or from her own remarks. I knew very
soon that she was English by birth, and had been only a year and a half
in America; that she had scarcely passed her twenty-fifth year, and was
still embellished with all the graces of youth; that she had been a
wife; but was uninformed whether the knot had been untied by death or
divorce; that she possessed considerable, and even splendid, fortune;
but the exact amount, and all besides these particulars, were unknown to
me till some time after our acquaintance was begun.

One evening she had been talking very earnestly on the influence
annexed, in Great Britain, to birth, and had given me some examples of
this influence. Meanwhile my eyes were fixed steadfastly on hers. The
peculiarity in their expression never before affected me so strongly. A
vague resemblance to something seen elsewhere, on the same day,
occurred, and occasioned me to exclaim, suddenly, in a pause of her
discourse,--

"As I live, my good mamma, those eyes of yours have told me a secret. I
almost think they spoke to me; and I am not less amazed at the
strangeness than at the distinctness of their story."

"And, pr'ythee, what have they said?"

"Perhaps I was mistaken. I might have been deceived by a fancied voice,
or have confounded one word with another near akin to it; but let me die
if I did not think they said that