“‘Then, s’posin’ you and Dory get spliced, and we’ll have a double weddin’.  You have sparked it long enough, and we don’t stand foolin’ here,’ Mr. Brown said to me, in a half-laughing, half-threatening tone.

“I looked at Eudora, and her beautiful eyes were shining upon me with a look which made my pulses quicken as they never had before.  I don’t know what demon possessed me, unless it were the demon of the whiskey punch, of which I had drank far too much, and which prompted me to say, ’All right, if Eudora is willing.’

“To do her justice, she hesitated a moment, but when I kissed her she yielded, and with the touch of her lips there came over me a feeling I mistook for love, and everything was forgotten except the girl.  Elder Covil performed the double ceremony, and looked questioningly at me, as if doubtful whether I were in my right mind or not.  I thought I was, and felt extremely happy, until I woke to what I had done, and from which there was no escape.  I was bound to a girl whose sweet disposition and great beauty were her only attractions, and whose environments made me shudder.  I could not bring her to Crompton Place and introduce her to my friends, and I did not know what to do.

“Tom was furious when he heard of it, and suggested suicide and divorce, and everything else that was bad.  But Dora’s eyes held me for two weeks, and then I became so disillusionized and so sick of my surroundings, that I was nearly ready to follow Tom’s advice and blow out my brains.

“‘If you won’t kill yourself,’ he said, ’send the girl home to Florida, and leave her there till you make up your mind what to do.  There must be some way to untie that knot.  If not, you are in for it.’

“I sent her home, and after two or three weeks, during which Tom and I revolved a hundred plans, I decided on one, and went to see her in her home—­and such a home!  A log-house in a palmetto clearing, with a foolish old grandmother who did not know enough to ask or care what I was to Eudora.  I could not endure it, and I told Eudora how impossible it was for me to take her North until she had some education and knowledge of the world.  I would leave her, I said, until I could decide upon a school to which I would send her, and, as it would be absurd for a married woman to be attending school, she was to retain her maiden name of Harris, and tell no one of our marriage until I gave her permission to do so.  I think she would have jumped into the river at my bidding, and she promised all that I required.

“‘I shall never tell I am your wife until you say I may,’ she said to me when I left her, but there was a look in her eyes like that I once saw in a pet dog I had shot, and which in dying licked my hands.