her beyond the least fear of escape."

"Do you allude to any thing other than the mere consent which she
formerly gave to Peters's proposals of marriage, and which, I had
supposed, constituted the only engagement existing between them?"

"Yes, a far stronger case, which I have learned by way of my wife,
since I last conversed with you on the subject."

"Ah! What is it?" eagerly demanded the lover.

"Why as I gathered it, the case was this," answered the other. "The
old man, as well as Peters, you know, must always do things, if
possible, after the English custom; and both thinking more of property
than women, they got up a regularly-written marriage contract, or
settlement, by which one bound himself to give the other his daughter,
with such and such a dowry, and the other to marry the daughter, and
settle such and such sums on her and her heirs, all to be void in case
the marriage fell through by fault of the girl. But to provide against
this, they made another part to the instrument for her to sign, in
which they made her solemnly promise and covenant to marry Peters, and
none else; otherwise she was to forfeit her birthright in her father's
estate. This they somehow or other at last induced her to sign and
seal thus binding herself hand and foot forever, with but one single
advantage, which, it seems, she had the wit to get added to the
contract before she would sign it; and that was, that the time of
fulfilling the contract, or day of the marriage, was to be left to her."

"What a detestable conspiracy for a father to enter into against the
rightful liberty and happiness of a daughter!" exclaimed Woodburn,