At first, there was something to her young mind savoring of the romance to which she had rather given herself up, in the notion of a woodland cottage, and rural sports, and wild vines gadding fantastically around secluded bowers; but the reality--the sad reality of such a home and its associations--pressed too soon and heavily upon her to permit her much longer to entertain or encourage the dream of that glad fancy in which she originally set out.
The sphere to which she was transferred, it was soon evident, was neither grateful to the heart nor suited to the mind whose education had been such as hers; and the spirit of the young maiden, at all times given rather to a dreamy melancholy than to any very animated impulses, put on, in its new abiding-place, a garb of increased severity, which at certain moments indicated more of deep and settled misanthropy than any mere constitutionality of habit.
Munro was not at all times rude of speech and manner; and, when he pleased, knew well how so to direct himself as to sooth such a disposition.

He saw, and in a little while well understood, the temper of his niece; and, with a consideration under all circumstances rather creditable, he would most usually defer, with a ready accommodation of his own, to her peculiarities.

He was pleased and proud of her accomplishments; and from being thus proud, so far as such an emotion could consistently comport with a life and a licentiousness such as his, he had learned, in reality, to love the object who could thus awaken a sentiment so much beyond those inculcated by all his other habits.

To her he exhibited none of the harsh manner which marked his intercourse with all other persons; and in his heart sincerely regretted, and sought to avoid the necessity which, as we have elsewhere seen, had made him pledge her hand to Rivers--a disposition of it which he knew was no less galling and painful to her than it was irksome yet unavoidable to himself.
Unhappily, however, for these sentiments, he was too much under the control and at the mercy of his colleague to resist or refuse his application for her person; and though for a long time baffling, under various pretences, the pursuit of that ferocious ruffian, he felt that the time was at hand, unless some providential interference willed it otherwise, when the sacrifice would be insisted on and must be made; or probably her safety, as well as his own, might necessarily be compromised.

He knew too well the character of Rivers, and was too much in his power, to risk much in opposition to his will and desires: and, as we have already heard him declare, from having been at one time, and in some respects, the tutor, he had now become, from the operation of circumstances, the mere creature and instrument of that unprincipled wretch.
Whatever may have been the crimes of Munro beyond those already developed--known to and in the possession of Rivers--and whatever the nature of those ties, as well of league as of mutual risk, which bound the parties together in such close affinity, it is not necessary that we should state, nor, indeed, might it be altogether within our compass or capacity to do so.