"My mother loves you; but even if she did not, I am free to act, free to choose, as every man should be. I love and _revere_ my mother, but there is a passion stronger than filial love and reverence, which goes on conquering and to conquer. She will not, she cannot oppose me." "But Edith, dear Edith, who loves you so devotedly! She will hate me if I dare to supplant her." "A sister never can be supplanted,--and least of all such a sister as Edith, Gabriella. If you do not feel that love so expands, so enlarges the heart, that it makes room for all the angels in heaven, you could not share my island home." "If you knew all,--if I could tell you all," I cried,--and again I felt the barbed anguish that prostrated me at the grave,--"and you _shall_ know,--your generous love demands this confidence. When your mother has read the history of my parentage, I will place it in your hands; though my mother's character is as exalted and spotless as your own, there is a cloud over my name that will for ever rest upon it. Knowing _that_, you cannot, you will not wish to unite your noble, brilliant destiny with mine. This hour will be remembered as a dream, a bright, but fleeting dream." "What do I care for the past?" he exclaimed, detaining me as I endeavored to move on. "Talk not of a clouded name. Will not mine absorb it? What shaft of malice can pierce you, with my arm as a defence, and my bosom as a shield? Gabriella, it is you that I love, not the dead and buried past. You are the representative of all present joy and hope. I ask for nothing but your love,--your exclusive, boundless love,--a love that will be ready to sacrifice every thing but innocence and integrity for me,--that will cling to me in woe as in weal, in shame as in honor, in death as in life. Such is the love I give; and such I ask in return. Is it mine? Tell me not of opposing barriers; only tell me what your heart this moment dictates; forgetful of the past, regardless of the future? Is this love mine?" "It is," I answered, looking up through fast-falling tears. "Why will you wring this confession from me, when you only know it too well?" "One question more, Gabriella, for your truth-telling lips to answer. Is this love only given in _return_? Did it not spring spontaneously forth from the warmth and purity of your own heart, without waiting the avowal of mine? Gratitude is not love. It is _stone_, not bread, to a spirit as exacting as mine." Again the truth was forced from me by his unconquerable will,--a will that opened the secret valves of thought, and rolled away the rock from the fountain of feeling. Even then I felt the despotism as well as the strength of his love.