"I shall, however, make all this," he continued, "appear as well as possible to your friends and mine, especially, believe me, Miriam! I shall state, for your sake, that, after being rescued from the raft, you were partially insane, but still sufficiently mistress of yourself to coincide with me and your sisters in the wish to let your death as Miss Harz pass current with the world, until you should redeem your errors" (what errors?), "and be restored to health and perfect reason. You will see that your acknowledgment of the last paper includes these extenuating facts, when you have leisure to re-read it (for I saw how hastily you glanced over that one in particular); you must do me the favor to peruse it much more carefully," drawing on his gloves coolly, "before you make your final decision. You are very comfortable here, my dear girl," glancing around benignly, "but you have no conception of the frame of mind, bare walls, utter solitude, a tireless hearth and a frugal table, would bring about in a very few days or weeks, or even in one as resolute and defiant as yourself. I should be loath to try such an experiment _or deprive you, of your child_--but _necessitas non habet legem_, the school-book says. I think you, too, studied a little Latin, Miriam?" "Monster!" "Not a very relevant or polite remark, I must confess. By-the-by, Miriam, as you stand before me with your well-poised figure--your blazing eyes--your quivering nostrils--your curling, compressed lip--your heaving chest (always a splendid feature in your _physique_), your folded arms, and the color coming and going in your pale-olive cheek, in the old flame-like way I used to admire so much in your girlhood--you are a splendid creature, by Jove! I could find it in my heart to love you still--there, it is out at last--if it were not for Mrs. Raymond--" glancing, as he spoke, in the direction of Mrs. Clayton, with a knowing smile. "It was your magnificent disdain that kindled the torch before. Beware how you revive that fanaticism of mine!" I turned for one moment with an involuntary feeling of appeal to Mrs. Clayton, but her cold, green eyes were quivering in accordance with the smile that stretched her thin lips to a line of mocking mirth. One glimpse of sympathy would have carried me to her arms for refuge--distasteful as she was to me in every way save one. She, like myself, was a woman. But such perversion of all natural feeling estranged me from her irreconcilably and forever. I was alone; shame, humiliation, despair, possessed me; indignation, for the insult I was forced to bear in her presence, filled my soul--I stood with my head cast down, tears raining on my bosom, my arms dropped nervelessly beside me, my hands clinched, my whole frame trembling with excitement.