Minnie drew herself up proudly before him, as she heard his words, and stood with her beautiful head erect, and her keen eye fixed upon him, unwaveringly. "Had you possessed a soul to burn over a woman's woes, and a woman's wrongs, it would have been scorched out long ago, Bernard; but let that pass. I came to you this night, not only to tell over my own wretchedness, a reviewal of which had risen up so forcibly before me, but I came to you anew as the spirit of the past, to call up in your breast the memory of what you have been, and to ask you if the future brings a change. And now, Bernard, on all your hopes of happiness, here or hereafter, answer me truly. Do you sincerely love this girl, whose guileless heart you've won?" "And whether I do or not, girl, is it you I must make my confessor? No, never. It is a matter which concerns you not at all. Whether my heart be black as hate, or pure as an angel's pinion, I lay it bare to no one. Whatever my feelings or intent in this matter, they are my own." "Not so, Bernard. If ambition has prompted you to gain her affections, if love of wealth has sent you a wooer at that shrine, having in your breast no faithful heart to bestow in return for hers, let me beg, let me implore you, to stop where you are. Be merciful, compare the home which you can give, to the home from whence you take her. Compare the happiness which you can bestow to that of which you rob her, and feel, that if you take her, with all this, to a loveless breast, you take her to misery, to desolation, and death!" "Do you deem me a villain, woman?" "What you have been, you may be again." Wilkins mused a moment; then, in a softer and more subdued tone, said:-- "No, no; oh no! God only knows--but never that to her, oh never!" "Bernard! my mistress is dear to me; her happiness more sacred to me than my own. If I believed that you would ever play her false, if I believed that a sinister motive led you to accomplish this end, as I stand before you here, I would expose you as you are. I would lay bare to her the secrets of the past. I would warn her to recall the love which she has lavished on you, though the next hour should be my last, in consequence. Her happiness shall never be wrecked while I have the slightest power to guide it clear from danger." With his impetuous spirit growing calm, as Minny became more excited, Wilkins looked upon her, as she confronted him, with her soul in her face, and his eyes kindled with the admiration his impulsive but generous heart could not but feel.