“But it will not please Heaven, Miss Seabright. I only waited for your decision. I have it, and I shall leave here to-morrow. Had your conclusion been otherwise—but no more of that. And now,” said he sternly, “listen to me! You will go forth into the world. Your wondrous beauty, genius, and your riches will draw around you the mighty in intellect, wealth, and position. Yet, queen of that court as you will be, you will take no joy on your throne; you will know you have usurped the seat of another. Your graces of mind and of person will be the theme of every tongue, yet you will know that they clothe a soul spotted with dishonesty. Your extensive philanthropy will be the admiration of sages and statesmen, yet their praises will reproach you with the thought that your munificence is at the expense of another. Your benevolence will be the sustaining hope and comfort of all the poor and wretched around you, yet their very blessings will curse you with the thought that you have relieved them with means falsely taken and falsely kept from a widow. You will dwell in lordly mansions, yet their magnificence will oppress you with the consciousness that they belong in justice to another. You will be arrayed in costly garments, yet you will be scarcely able to bear the glare of their splendor, for you will know they cover a woman degraded from her pristine nobility by base ambition, and stained with foul injustice. You will be adorned with priceless gems, yet the diamond tiara on your brow will burn and sear your brain like a diadem of flame; the diamond necklace on your bosom will scorch and eat into your heart like a circlet of fire.” “Hugh! Hugh! spare me! I tell you you will drive me mad!” she cried, clasping her temples. “At last you will cap the climax of your hopes by marrying some grand magnate of the land, yet you will bear within your bosom all the while a false, a widowed, and a lonely heart, for you will know that your husband is not your true mate; for you will know—you do know, oh, Garnet!—you feel by all the instincts of your nature that it was to this—this bosom that God wedded you from the first!” he said, dropping his voice to a gentle tone, and drawing her toward him. She dropped her face upon his shoulder, and wept and sobbed as if her heart would break. Such convulsions of sobs; such a deluge of tears! Gasping all the while: “Oh, I do! I know it, Hugh. Then, why will you cast me from you because I happen to be burdened with a fortune? Is not that a strange, new reason for leaving the girl that you love?” “Garnet! darling Nettie!” said Hugh tenderly; “if you were suddenly bereft of your enchanting beauty, my love would be strong enough to bear the change; for the heart and soul that I loved most would live for me unaltered. But smirch not the fairness of your soul, Garnet, for I will not wed moral deformity.”