"Is it," he continues, presently, his indignation being a little cooled, "the mere fact of my being well-off that damns me in your eyes? If so, I think I may plead 'not guilty,' seeing that this oppressive wealth of mine lies on the other side of Sir Thomas's death--an event probably, at least, as distant as the millennium." She gazes out (not seeing it the while) at the driving rain, while a troubled look flits over her small grave face; but she says neither "Yea" nor "Nay." "When I am asking you to give me your whole sweet life," he cries, impulsively, snatching one of her little cold hands, "are you so ungenerous as to wish me to have absolutely nothing to offer you in return?" Still silence. "Essie!" he says, drawing her nearer to him, and looking resolutely down into her timid reluctant eyes, "I don't ask you to have pity upon me--that is a puling, cowardly way of making love, I always think; if the only road to a woman's heart lies through her compassion, I had rather never get there at all--but I ask you to pity _yourself_. To be my wife, ill-tempered and jealous as I, no doubt, should often be, would be distinctly a better fate than to be old Blessington's drudge. Child! have you no pity for yourself?" "None whatever," she answers, with emotion. "I am not in the least sorry for myself; I richly deserve everything that is come to me. As long as I am unhappy myself, I can better bear the recollection of my vile conduct to the best and loyalest lover ever any woman had; if I began to be happy, I think my remorse would kill me." He drops her hand suddenly, with a gesture of anger. "I have been sacrificed to him once already," he says, fiercely; "am I to be sacrificed a second time to a sentimental recollection of him--to the mere memory of his perfections?" She raises her rejected hand and its fellow deprecatingly towards him. "Don't be angry with me," she cries, pleadingly; "this has nothing to say to him; the reason why I will not marry you is that I am a _mésalliance_ for you." "That is my concern, I imagine," he answers, stiffly. "I think not," she rejoins, gently. "You have lost your senses, as you told me just now; you are mad, and I am sane; therefore I can judge better than you yourself what is for your good: some day you will agree with me." "Never!" he replies, emphatically; and with that, she standing nigh, and the temptation being mighty, he flings his arms _sans cérémonie_ about her supple body, and strains her to his breast. Outside, the rain streams down with a continuous quiet noise; the dappled deer are herding their branchy heads together under the old leafless hornbeams for shelter. For one moment Esther lies passive in her lover's arms, yielding to the bliss of that rough embrace; and, after all, among the blisses that we wot of, what is there so great as, "After long grief and pain, To feel the arms of your true love Round you once again?"