I take the step deliberately

Once more within her quiet chamber, Leah locked the door and stood a moment with frightened face gazing furtively around the room. All was silent. The beating of her own wild heart was all the sound she heard. Then sinking down from actual weakness, she sat a moment as if summoning the last spark of courage in her timid, fearful soul and said, "Yes, it is a dreadful alternative, but I am driven to it. If I obey my father, and go to Europe, I know I shall not return for many years, if ever. If I am to be separated from my father, it shall not be by that woman's scheming. She has devised this plan to send me from my home, and she shall be disappointed. I am assured that Emile loves me, yet I should never have married him had I not been forced to do so-simply because he is not a Jew. But as it is, I take the step deliberately, firmly resolved to abide the consequences, be they good or evil. Yes, I am resolved to take this first step in disobedience to my father's wishes. I cannot help it. It has caused me terrible suffering to reach this decision, but circumstances press me to it. Now, it is irrevocable. God forgive me, if I cause my father sorrow! He knows how I love and serve him, and Heaven knows how cruelly I have been dealt with. But time is passing. I must write a last, fond letter to my dear Lizzie; tell her of this final, desperate step in my life, and beg that her love, so long tried, may follow me still through the untried life that lies before me, be it a life of sunshine or of shadow. "Oh! the thought is dreadful. Let me see. Now the hour is eleven. Emile will come at twelve. I must hasten;" and rising from her recumbent posture, Leah replaced the watch within her bosom, and seating herself at the escritoire, wrote a last, loving letter to the friend of her school-days. This she dropped into her pocket, that she might post it at the lodge. Then she wrote, with trembling hand and faltering heart, a farewell message to her beloved father; and she was done. In a small portmanteau she had carefully packed the few things requisite for her clandestine journey. The well-filled trunks were safely locked, and the keys hanging idly upon the ring in her work-basket. "These trunks," she murmured to herself, as she glanced around the room preparatory to leaving it, "will descend to my sister, or go to Europe, or, maybe, will be destroyed. I shall never use their contents. Dear Aunt Barbara's careful packing was all to no purpose, had she only known it. Kind Aunt Barbara! Now, one thing more remains to be done. I must have my mother's miniature before I quit my father's house, perhaps forever. Aunt Barbara has secured the key of the cabinet for me, and it lies secreted in one of the drawers. Yes, Rebecca has kept it from me for nearly five years. How I burn with anger yet, to think of the cruel lie that took from me the only gift I ever valued in my life! That perfidious bosom shall never feel the pressure of that precious, jewelled face again. No, in heaven's name, I will not leave without it!"