I know how I should receive such an assertion from him now, but I think I took it then with a resignation, he must have found mighty edifying; and when he went on to tell me that all this richness and greatness were to be shared by me when that celestial time came, I think I rather liked the idea than otherwise.

The horrible creature seemed to have woke up that day, for the first time, and all of a sudden, to a conviction that I was in a fair way to become a woman, and rather a handsome one, and that he had better make sure of me before any accident interfered to take me from him.

Full of this laudable notion, he became a daily visitor of mine from thenceforth, and made the discovery, simultaneously with myself, that the oftener he came the less favor he found in my sight.

I had, before, tacitly disliked him, and shrank with a natural repulsion from his dreadful ugliness; but now, from negative dislike, I grew to positive hate.

The utter loathing and abhorrence I have had for him ever since, began then--I grew dimly and intuitively conscious of what he would make me, and shrank from my fate with a vague horror not to be told in words.