“_Do_ not ask me! Alas! have I not tried to be patient? _I_ have kept my thoughts and feelings down, like wronged, suffering, and desperate captives in the hold of a slave ship, fearing to lift the hatches even, lest they should break forth, spreading pestilence and death!” She looked so _unutterably wretched_ as she lay there, with her small hands pressed tightly upon her brow, and as her lips, quivering, sprang apart and closed; that Raymond, pitying her, stooped, and placing his hands under her arms, raised her up, and laid her head upon his bosom, looking kindly in her face all the while, as he said, “Hagar, I _do_ love you—always shall, always _did_, Hagar, from the first instant that my eye fell upon you and caught yours—from the first moment that I, a youth, singled you, an infant, out from all the world as my own—for life, past death, and through eternity, recognising you for my own, knowing you for my own—_claiming_ you for my own, preferring you, a little, ugly, perverse infant, to all the fair and gentle maidens of my own age, because I knew that into your little bit of a body was crowded and pressed the soul and life, the fire and spirit of twenty women—_claiming_ you for my own, and waiting until you should grow up to womanhood, and never fearing or dreaming that any one would ever cleave my life down through the middle, and bear off the other half of it—_my Hagar_—for when was ever _I_ jealous, Hagar?” She clasped her arms tightly around his neck, and buried her face in his bosom as she answered, “But my own, _own_—you know that I was not attractive,—that no one would wish to dispute your claim to me.” “On the contrary, I knew that you _were_ attractive, and that Gusty May set up a very clamorous claim to you, and that you only needed to be further known, to raise many aspirants to your hand among superficial and impetuous young men like Gusty, who, if their eye is pleased and fancy tickled, believe themselves in love. No, Hagar! I trusted _in you_—not out of you—IN YOU, for the security of our love and life.” “My own! my own! you _might_ well have trusted in me—_may_ well trust in me.” “I did, and shall _always_. I married the little infant when I raised her on my knee at that wedding party given to Sophie and my father; I found my little wife then, and knew that she acknowledged my claim, saw in her splendid eyes, fascinated to my own, that she felt and acknowledged me.” “Oh, I did! I did! Looking up into your face I saw a soul radiating there that seemed to draw my spirit up to meet it! and I felt, Raymond, I felt that I had for the first time met a spirit that I had neither the power nor the will to resist in anything _long_; for see, Raymond! I, who defied Sophie and your father, told _you_ the same moment, with my face in your bosom, that I would do anything in the world you wished me to do. Don’t you remember?” “Yes, love, I remember every single item.”