You would like me just as well with my beauty spoilt in such a cause.

But it is that you make a coward of me, little girl.

When I think that anything might happen now to prevent our marriage it makes me sweat with fear.

Else I would have risked my life over and over again, and not have cared two straws about it." "I know you are brave," I said, at which he looked pleased and said that it was the first kind word I had given him.
In these days he did not force his caresses upon me as much as he did at first, but used to call me his little nun, and say in his usual boastful way that he would make me in time eager for that from which I turned away now.

Every day as our marriage came nearer I dreaded it more, and felt as if I must run away to the ends of the earth rather than endure it; but when I looked at my grandfather's face I knew there was no help for me.
The marriage was fixed for the 20th of December, and I could see that he was nearly as impatient for it as my bridegroom.