and
yours been similar? Are we not both immured in this strong prison of
Utah? Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye confront you
in the canon? Who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?
Not I, at least. Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the
most ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that
have spared your husband? You know well it would not. I, too, had
perished along with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his
last moments, nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the
hand of Brigham Young."

"Ah!" cried I, "and could you purchase life by such concessions?"

"Young lady," answered the doctor, "I both could and did; and you will
live to thank me for that baseness. You have a spirit, Asenath, that it
pleases me to recognise. But we waste time. Mr. Fonblanque's estate
reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the church; but some part of it
has been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that person, I
should perhaps tell you without more delay, is no other than myself."

At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung
together like lost souls.

"It is as I supposed," resumed the doctor, with the same measured
utterance. "You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to
convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view
of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the
slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among
themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the
union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it. No, you need
not, madam, and my old friend--" and here the doctor rose and bowed with
something of gallantry--"you need not apprehend my importunities. On the
contrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am
obliged to bid you follow me at once, and that in the name, not of my
wish, but of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a common
mind."

So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had now
fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.

"What does it mean?--what will become of us?" I cried.

"Not that, at least," replied my mother, shuddering. "So far we can
trust him. I seem to read among his words a certain tragic promise.
Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserable
parents?"

Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: