“This is no time, Heaven knows, for the cowardice of girlish shame. Father, I love him! For three long years I have believed myself his destined wife. Long before our betrothal, as far back, or farther, perhaps, than memory reaches, I loved him, and knew that he loved me, and felt that in some strange way I belonged finally to him. Long, long before I ever heard of courtship, betrothal, or marriage, I felt in my deepest heart--and knew he felt it too--that Ralph was my final proprietor and prince, that I, at last and forever, was his own little Margaret--ay! as your Marguerite was yours, my father. And always and ever, in all the changes of our life, in joy and in sorrow, in presence and in absence, I seemed to repose sweetly in his heart as a little bird in its nest, loving him too quietly and securely to know how deeply and strongly. But oh, my father, it has remained for the anguish of this day to teach me how, above all creatures, I love my promised husband, even as my mother loved hers. The blow that reaches Ralph’s heart would break my own. Father, I can conceive this globe upon which we live, with all its seas and continents, its mountains, plains and cities, its whole teeming life, collapsing and sinking out of sight through space, and yet myself continuing to live, somewhere, in some sphere of being; but, my father, I cannot conceive of Ralph’s death and my own continued life, anywhere, as possible! for there, at that point, all sinks into darkness, chaos, annihilation! Swift madness or death would follow his loss! Oh, my father, say, is he not my husband? Oh, my father, will you make your child a widow, a widow by her father’s hand?” “Margaret, this is the very infatuation of passion!” “Passion! Well, since grief and terror and despair have made my bosom so stormy, you may call it so! else never should my lifelong, quiet, contented attachment to Ralph be termed a passion, as if it were the feverish caprice of yesterday. But oh, Heaven! all this time you are not answering me. You do not promise that you will not meet him. Father, I cannot die of grief, else had I long since been lying beside your other Marguerite! But I feel that I may go mad, and that soon. Already reason reels with dwelling on this impending duel! with the thought that a few hours hence----! Father, if you would not have your Marguerite’s child go mad, curse the author of her being, and lay desperate hands upon her own life, forgo this duel! do not make her a widowed bride!” “Wretched girl, it were better that you were dead, for come what may, Margaret, honor must be saved.” “Then you will kill him! My father will kill my husband!” “Why do you harp upon this subject forever? Shall I not equally risk my own life?”