About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract adultsex an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons adultsex for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside adultsex the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after adultsex his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain adultsex can ever be adultsex learned. Naturally he was aware of adultsex the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of
his would be received, hence he looked
about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable adultsex pressure. Such candidates, he found,
were not at all easy to adultsex discover; since he adultsex had very particular adultsex requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At adultsex length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and
unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house adultsex on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been