“Silence! I will not hear you. I will never give up my privileges. I will not be a fanatic to please you. Oh! look at me, Hugh; and do not think I speak from vanity, but from a war of conflicting passions, that rends my soul in twain. Do I look like one to be condemned to poverty, and privation, and domestic toil, and drudgery? I will speak out, though in your eyes I convict myself of vanity and presumption. You never called me beautiful in words, but you have said so with your eyes a thousand times. Oh, Hugh, I valued my beauty as I did my wealth, for your sake. But should I be beautiful in poverty? You know that I know what poverty is! Look at my hair, Hugh. Yesterday you took the whole mass up in your hand and looked at it as at a treasure, so proudly; then you singled out a ringlet and examined it as a strange beauty, so curiously. Now look at the ringlets again. Do you think it requires no care to keep them so soft and glossy, and in such full curl? Why, a rose-bush will not bloom in full glory unless it is cared for and tended; neither will my beauty. Hugh, I do not know why I may not venture to speak before you what I dare to think before God. I know that my soul’s habitation is beautiful; and it seems to me fit that it should be so, and that its beauty should be enhanced by rich drapery, and preserved from all uses. How could that be done in bitter poverty?” “Garnet,” he answered solemnly, “the soul is greater than its temple. Would you preserve the temple sacred from all uses, yet degrade the greater deity within it? Would you preserve the delicacy of your beauty, and clothe your form in gorgeous apparel by an action that would stain your soul with foul dishonesty?” “Don’t talk to me any more. You will drive me frantic. Dishonesty! That is the low vice of ignorant and debased natures, for which they are sometimes sent to the State’s prison.” “And yet which is more excusable ‘in ignorant and debased natures’ than in intelligent and exalted ones,” said he sternly. “Dishonesty! What have I to do with that? This estate is legally mine. To keep it is not even injustice. Why do you talk to me so?” she exclaimed, tearing at her bosom, as she wildly walked up and down the terrace, as if to pluck away the burning pain there. “Why do you torture—exasperate—madden me so?” “It is not I, Garnet. No mere words that I could speak could disturb your bosom’s peace. It is the awful conscience there that refuses to be silent,” said Hugh solemnly. She paused before him, trembling all over; clenching her chest with her spread hands, as though to clutch the passion there; her eyes burning in their intense lurid fire, in fearful contrast with the ghastly paleness of her brow and cheeks, and gasped between her white lips: