But the mother rejected him with anger and scorn.

He was not rich, though belonging to a family of high character, and so fell far below her requirements.

Under a pressure that almost drove the girl to despair, she gave her consent to a marriage that looked more terrible than death.
A month before the time fixed for, its consummation, she barred the contract by a secret union with Granger.
Edith knew her mother's character too well to hope for any reconciliation, so far as Mr.Granger was concerned.

Coming in as he had done between her and the consummation of her highest ambition, she could never feel toward him anything but the most bitter hatred; and so, after remaining at home for about a week after her secret marriage, she wrote this brief letter to her mother and went away: "My DEAR MOTHER: I do not love Spencer Wray, and would rather die than marry him, and so I have made the marriage to which my heart has never consented, an impossibility.

You have left me no other alternative but this.