his shapeless impulses; in short, being affected by the whole stir of his
nature,--spoke to Rose of love, and with an energy that, indeed, there was
no resisting when once it broke bounds. And Rose, whose maiden thoughts,
to say the truth, had long dwelt upon this young man,--admiring him for a
certain dark beauty, knowing him familiarly from childhood, and yet having
the sense, that is so bewitching, of remoteness, intermixed with intimacy,
because he was so unlike herself; having a woman's respect for
scholarship, her imagination the more impressed by all in him that she
could not comprehend,--Rose yielded to his impetuous suit, and gave him
the troth that he requested. And yet it was with a sort of reluctance and
drawing back; her whole nature, her secretest heart, her deepest
womanhood, perhaps, did not consent. There was something in Septimius, in
his wild, mixed nature, the monstrousness that had grown out of his hybrid
race, the black infusions, too, which melancholic men had left there, the
devilishness that had been symbolized in the popular regard about his
family, that made her shiver, even while she came the closer to him for
that very dread. And when he gave her the kiss of betrothment her lips
grew white. If it had not been in the day of turmoil, if he had asked her
in any quiet time, when Rose's heart was in its natural mood, it may well
be that, with tears and pity for him, and half-pity for herself, Rose
would have told Septimius that she did not think she could love him well
enough to be his wife.

And how was it with Septimius? Well; there was a singular correspondence in
his feelings to those of Rose Garfield. At first, carried away by a
passion that seized him all unawares, and seemed to develop itself all in
a moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose, so pleaded his suit, as if his
whole earthly happiness depended on her consent to be his bride. It seemed
to him that her love would be the sunshine in the gloomy dungeon of his
life. But when her bashful, downcast, tremulous consent was given, then