“Speak Mabel. Did you succeed? Is there hope left? For God’s sake speak!” and clinging to his arm for support, she did speak, briefly, rapidly, as though every word were a pang she sought to spare him. He listened to the whole in silence, with his eyes fixed upon her colorless face. “I looked for nothing more,” he said at last. “Hope did not delay me.” “Delay you, Edward.” “I mean that I never built upon it,” he said hurriedly, and averting his eyes, “I meant but that.” She looked upon him with a troubled face, as he paced the floor of the little apartment, and spoke again, but hesitatingly. “You will give up the boy, Edward?” “I have no right to give him a prison roof when a better offers,” said Clifdon bitterly. “He has the Mordaunt face, and more of the Mordaunt blood than mine. Ay, send him, he might curse me for the love that would keep him.” “Hush! hush! dearest: never talk so wildly. I will go to Brendon, I will kneel again and pray for mercy, for delay. I will walk the very streets a beggar till the debt is paid. Only speak not so. Is there not hope?” He tossed back the bright dark hair as though an insufferable weight were pressing upon his temples, and flinging open a window, leaned out and gasped for breath. When he again drew back his face was calm, but his voice sounded with unnatural hollowness. “If Mark Brendon sees to-morrow’s light, Mabel, your husband lies in a debtor’s prison, without the means to work for his freedom. And he will be there forever.” “Not so, Clifdon, I shall be alone—” her voice faltered despite her efforts, “unburthened, and I can work.” “_You_,” he said, abruptly pausing before her; and taking in his own her white, small hands, he gazed upon them with a smile of bitter mockery. “You would have starved—you would starve, Mabel, without a friend or a hope in this wide world. You would die unheeded at the threshold of him you have forsaken for—your husband.” She shuddered; not at his words, but at the strange expression within his eye and upon his lip. “When I took you from your palace-home, Mabel, it was with the love of a man young in the world, and young in sorrow. Now would I give my right hand to place you there again. To part from you Mabel, never more to look upon your face, or to rest upon your bosom and listen to your sweet voice, when my head is throbbing with the weariness and tumult of yon accursed buffoonery. Will you leave me? I bid you go.” “Leave you?” “Hark, Mabel, hark! Suppose the hand you clasp and wet with your tears, were double dyed in guilt; that it were red even with the blood of murder, (ay, shudder and grow pale and blench away!) If I told you this, that I was a demon walking hand in hand through earth with an angel, that I had sinned too deeply even to meet your eye or to hear your voice, would I drive you from me?” “If I could believe.” “You would cling to me in sorrow, but not in guilt, Mabel,” he said, regarding her with a look of jealous suspicion.