"Do not go yet," he said; "there is more that I must say to you. You have a right to ask me--" "I have nothing to ask you," I hastily replied; "from the fatal hour when, by an unpremeditated act, I put the seal to the misery of my whole life; when by the most unfortunate union of circumstances, you and your tyrant became the witnesses of that act, I have lost the power of free agency--I have lost the power, the right to resent, what every woman should and does resent." "Ellen!" exclaimed Henry, "your coldness, your calmness, make me more miserable than your violence did just now. Do not you _now_ understand, why with tears, with threats, with supplications, with the energy of despair, I implored you to become my wife--and in secret? I thought you loved me; had I not a right to believe it, too? Had not your words and your actions given me that right? Once married to you, your fortune--(I could not say this to many women, but to you I can)--your fortune transferred to Alice freed me at least from that part of my engagement to her; and, as your husband, would I not have toiled day and night to supply its place? Would we not have both scorned all that calumniators, or enemies, could do against us? If in her anger Tracy had spoken out--which was not likely, when she saw nothing to be gained by it--would I not have carried you away from all that could have marred your peace? Would I not have cherished you, and worshipped you through life, and to the hour of death, and warded away from you every harsh word or unkind look? Ay!" he exclaimed suddenly, as I turned coldly away from him, "hate me as much as you choose, but do not set me at defiance! It is not Edward, your excellent, your conscientious lover, who would take to his arms, and cherish in his bosom--" "Do not talk of _him_, Henry," I exclaimed; "do not for God's sake talk of him. I have told you already that I shall never marry him; I have made all the promises that you required. I am _here_, where I should not be, if I wished to set you at defiance; but in mercy do not taunt me; do not torture me by alluding--" A loud rap at the door startled us both, and awakened Alice. CHAPTER XIII. "But there where I have garnered up my heart, Where cither I must live, or bear no life, The fountain from which my current runs Or else dries up--To be discarded thence!" "I know his eye doth homage other where, Or else what lets it but he would he here? ........................... Since that my beauty cannot please his eye, I'll weep what's left away and weeping die." SHAKESPEARE.