"You echo me,--and with a mocking smile. Woman! your beauty maddens me! I adore you!" His face was flushed with passion,--his deep-set eyes flamed with a fire that could not be mistaken,--his voice, at other times deep as an organ, was tremulous and broken. First pressing her clasped hands against his broad chest,--which heaved with emotion,--he next girdled her waist with his sinewy arm, and despite her struggles, drew her to his bosom. "Gaze upon yonder portrait! those eyes are wildly beautiful, but pale when compared with yours. That form is cast in the mould of voluptuous loveliness, but yours,--yours, Esther,--yours--" Advancing toward the portrait, he pushed the hangings aside,--the doorway of an adjoining apartment was revealed. "Come, Esther, by heavens you must be mine,--and now!" There was no mistaking the determination of that husky voice, the passion of that bloodshot eye. Now pale as death, now covered from the bosom to the brow with burning blushes, she struggled in his embrace, but in vain. He dragged her near and nearer to the threshold--on the threshold (which divided the Golden Room from the next apartment, where all was dark as midnight) he paused, drew her struggling form to his breast, and stifled the cry which rose to her lips, with burning kisses. With a desperate effort she glided from his arms, and the next moment,--her hair unloosed on her bosom bared in the struggle,--confronted him with the poniard gleaming over her head. "Hoary villain!" she cried, dilating in every inch of her stature, until she seemed to rival his almost giant height,--"lay but a finger on me and you shall pay for the outrage with your life!" Her head thrown back, her bared bosom swelling madly in the light, her dark hair resting in one rich, wavy mass upon her neck and shoulders,--it was a noble picture. And her eyes,--you should have seen the flashing of her eyes! As for the statesman, with one foot upon the threshold, he turned his face over his shoulder, thus exhibiting his massive features in profile, and gazed upon her with a look which was something between the sublime and the ridiculous; a strange mixture of passion, wonder and chagrin. "Esther,----" "No doubt you can induce husbands to sell their wives to you;" the eyes still flashed, and the poniard glittered overhead; "no doubt, gray-haired fathers have sold their daughters to your embrace; nay, even brothers, for a place, may have given their sisters to your lust; but know," again that bitter word so bitterly said,--'_hoary villain!_'--"know, hoary villain! that Esther Royalton will not sell herself to you, even to purchase her brother's safety, his life, much less her own! For know, that while there is a taint upon my blood, that there is blood in my veins which never knew dishonor, the blood of ---- ----, whose grandchild stands before you!" As she named that name, Godlike repeated it from pure astonishment.