belonged to a noble family. He had made all his plans to take her to
Spain and establish her identity in the hope of securing a great reward.
But just as he was about to execute this scheme, he was seized by a
disease which prostrated him for many months, and threw him into a
nervous condition in which he contracted the habit of stammering. On his
recovery from his long sickness he found himself stripped of everything
he had accumulated; but his shrewdness and indomitable will remained,
and he soon began to rebuild his shattered fortune.

During all these ups and downs, Pepeeta was his inseparable and devoted
companion. The admiration which her childish beauty excited in his heart
had deepened into affection and finally into love. When she reached the
age of sixteen or seventeen years, he proposed to her the idea of
marriage. She knew nothing of her own heart, and little about life, but
had been accustomed to yield implicit obedience to his will. She
consented and the ceremony was performed by a Justice of the Peace in
the city of Cincinnati, a year or so before their appearance in the
Quaker village. An experience so abnormal would have perverted, if not
destroyed her nature, had it not contained the germs of beauty and
virtue implanted at her birth. They were still dormant, but not dead;
they only awaited the sun and rain of love to quicken them into life.

The quack had coarsened with the passing years, but Pepeeta, withdrawing
into the sanctuary of her soul, living a life of vague dreams and
half-conscious aspirations after something, she knew not what, had grown
even more gentle and submissive. As she did not yet comprehend life, she
did not protest against its injustice or its incongruity. The vulgar
people among whom she lived, the vulgar scenes she saw, passed across
the mirror of her soul without leaving permanent impressions. She
performed the coarse duties of her life in a perfunctory manner. It was