"Not my equal! You are very honest, Miss Jane. In your eyes, Professor Fernow has perhaps no equal in the world, and you would never have dared approach him with the proposal to sell his bride for money. Keep your indignation to yourself, I see that your whole nature rises in arms at the very thought. You dared not propose it to him, but you have to me!" Here the self-mastery ended, and the old, uncontrollable passion broke forth fearfully from its depths.--"You have dared make this proposal to _me_! You suppose that I would take part in such an infamous transaction! You dare treat Henry Alison as if he were an extortioner, whose word and honor were to be sold for dollars! Jane Forest, by Heaven you shall answer to me for this insult!" Jane drew back, she gazed at him in consternation. She had not been prepared for such a reception of her proposal. Henry snatched the paper from the table, and furiously tore it in pieces. "With this wretched bit of paper you would purchase your freedom, and hurl the money and your contempt after me. Forever and eternally you have seen in me only the moneyed man. It may be that it was calculation that led me to you, but you soon enough taught me to reckon with another factor than the dollar. I have loved you, Jane loved you to madness, and I loved you only the more ardently the more coldly you repelled me, up to the moment when that blue-eyed professor crossed my path, and I learned to hate you both. You know nothing of my interview with him, only what I have told you myself; you do not dream what passed between us that night your brother died. Well, then, I meant to murder him because he denied me the duel. This money lover had carried his calculations so far that he forgot all, that he risked life, honor and future, for the sake of one treasure they sought to wrest from him. Do you now understand, Jane, what you have been to me, and why I now hold you fast? I know that I have no happiness to expect from you, that my house will be to me a hell; but I also know that no power on earth can tear you two asunder unless it is my arm. And my arm shall do it; let it cost you your whole inheritance, let it cost me my last dollar, I fling both from me, but he shall not have you!" He tore the paper into bits and threw the pieces scornfully away; then he strode excitedly to the window and stared out with face turned away from her. Jane stood motionless, horrified, bewildered, by this wild outbreak of an emotion she had never suspected in Henry. For the first time he showed her this aspect, and deep in her heart she felt it was the true one, and she felt also with burning shame the wrong she had done him; but through it all, this shame and horror, broke softly and faintly a ray of hope; she knew that the woman is all-powerful when she is beloved.