"Yes, Mr. Murray."

Her voice was tremulous and almost inaudible.

"I had business in Tennessee, no matter now, what, or where, and I went on that night. After a week I returned, that afternoon when I found you reading in my sitting-room. Still I was sceptical, and not until I opened the tomb, was I convinced that you had not betrayed the trust which you supposed I placed in you. Then, as you stood beside me in all your noble purity and touching girlish beauty,--as you looked up half reproachfully, half defiantly at me--it cost me a terrible effort to master myself--to abstain from clasping you to my heart, and telling you all that you were to me. Oh! how I longed to take you in my arms and feed my poor famished heart with one touch of your lips! I dared not look at you, lest I should lose my self- control. The belief that Gordon was a successful rival sealed my lips on that occasion; and ah! the dreary wretchedness of the days of suspense that followed. I was a starving beggar who stood before what I coveted above everything else on earth, and saw it labelled with another man's name and beyond my reach. The daily sight of that emerald ring on your finger maddened me; and you can form no adequate idea of the bitterness of feeling with which I noted my mother's earnest efforts and manoeuvres to secure for Gordon Leigh-- to sell to him--the little hand which her own son would have given worlds to claim in the sight of God and man! Continually I watched you when you least expected me; I strewed infidel books where I knew you must see them; I tempted you more than you dreamed of; I teased and tormented and wounded you whenever an opportunity offered; for I hoped to find some flaw in your character, some defect in your temper, some inconsistency between your professions and your practice. I knew Leigh was not your equal, and I said bitterly, 'She is poor and unknown, and will surely marry him for his money, for his position--as Agnes would have married me.' But you did not! and when I knew that you had positively refused his fortune, I felt that a great dazzling light had broken suddenly upon my darkened life; and, for the first time since I parted with Murray Hammond, tears of joy filled my eyes. I ceased to struggle against my love--I gave myself up to it, and only asked, How can I overcome her aversion to me? You were the only tie that linked me with my race, and for your sake I almost felt as if I could forget my hate. But you shrank more and more from me, and my punishment overtook me when I saw how you hated Clinton Allston's blood-smeared hands, and with what unfeigned horror you regarded his career. When you declared so vehemently that his fingers should never touch yours--oh! it was the fearful apprehension of losing you that made me catch your dear hands and press them to my aching heart. I was stretched upon a rack that taught me the full import of Isaac Taylor's grim words, 'Remorse is man's dread prerogative!' Believing that you knew all my history and that your aversion was based upon it, I was too proud to show you my affection. Douglass Manning was as much my friend as I permitted any man to be; we had travelled together through Arabia, and with his handwriting I was familiar. Suspecting your literary schemes, and dreading a rival in your ambition, I wrote to him on the subject, discovered all I wished to ascertain, and requested him, for my sake, to reconsider and examine your MS. He did so to oblige me, and I insisted that he should treat your letters and your MS. with such severity as to utterly crush your literary aspirations. Oh, child! do you see how entirely you fill my mind and heart? How I scrutinize your words and actions? Oh, my darling--"




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024