The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar
appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like one
resigned to weariness. I was at her knees that moment; but her hands
fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the same
touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.

I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my
tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes. They rested upon mine with such a
depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of
my sorrow I was startled into attention.

"Enough," he said, "to lamentation. Your mother went to death as to a
bridal, dying where her husband died. It is time, Asenath, to think of
the survivors. Follow me to the next room."

I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he
gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began
to address me:

"You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate
watch of Brigham Young. It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances,
to become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular
fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes
of the President himself. Such a fate for a girl like you were worse
than death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily deeper
in the mire of this pit of woman's degradation. But is escape
conceivable? Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with what
security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted
a sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom. Where your father
failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless
in the toils?"

I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
understood.

"I see," I cried; "you judge me rightly. I must follow where my parents
led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!"

"No," replied the doctor, "not death for you. The flawed vessel we may
break, but not the perfect. No, your mother cherished a different hope,
and so do I. I see," he cried, "the girl develop to the completed woman,
the plan reach fulfilment, the promise--ay, outdone! I could not bear to
arrest so lively, so comely a process. It was your mother's thought," he
added, with a change of tone, "that I should marry you myself." I fear I
must have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made
haste to