Not Pretty, but Precious

e, my life is a blank. I have heard of empty-hearted people: I know now what the phrase means. I am empty-hearted: I have not one hope, one particle of faith, one real, honest desire, except to "drie my weir," as the Scotch say, doing my duty as best I may, as it comes to me. But I have a woman's hatred of pity: my cousins have long accorded me a contemptuous pity for being an old maid. I laughed their pity to scorn while I had Esther Hooper. What more did I need? We could enact over again the sweet old life of the Ladies of Llangollen.

We had planned our lives a thousand times. Poor we both were, yet we would put something away every year for our old age, and work cheerily on until we could work no more, then creep to our nest like a couple of old kittens, and cuddle down by our warm, pleasant fire--together, and therefore content. Well, you see it was not to be: she had grown affrighted, I suppose, at the thought of all that weary life with only me, and has married a man who outrages all her delicate ins