after the ladies at the Grove, I turned away and walked on; but he followed, and kept his horse at my side: it was evident he intended to be my companion all the way.
`Well! I don't much care. If you want another rebuff, take it--and welcome,' was my inward remark. `Now sir, what next?'
This question, though unspoken, was not long unanswered: after a few passing observations upon indifferent subjects, he began, in solemn tones, the following appeal to my humanity:
`It will be four years next April since I first saw you, Mrs. Huntingdon,--you may have forgotten the circumstance, but I never can--I admired you then, most deeply, but I dared not love you: in the following autumn, I saw so much of your perfections that I could not fail to love you, though I dared not shew it. For upwards of three years, I have endured a perfect martyrdom. From the anguish of suppressed emotions, intense and fruitless longings, silent sorrow, crushed hopes, and trampled affections,--I have suffered more than I can tell, or you imagine--and you were the cause of it--and not, altogether, the innocent cause. My youth is wasting away; my prospects are darkened; my life is a desolate blank; I have no rest day or night: I am become a burden to myself and others;and you might save me by a words glance, and will not do it.--Is this right?'
`In the first place, I don't believe you,' answered I: `in the second, if you will be such a fool, I can't hinder it.'
`If you affect,' replied he earnestly, `to regard as folly, the best, the strongest, the most godlike impulses of our nature,--I don't believe you--I know you are not the heartless, icy being you pretend to bayou had a heart once, and you gave it to your husband. When you found him utterly unworthy of the treasure you reclaimed it;--and you will not pretend that you loved that sensual, earthly minded profligate so deeply, so devotedly that you can never love another?--I know that there are feelings in your nature that have never yet been called forth--I know, too, that in your present neglected, lonely state you are, and must be miserable. You have it in your power to raise two human beings from a state of actual suffering to such unspeakable beatitude as only generous, noble self-forgetting love can give (for you can love me if you will; you may tell me that you scorn and detest me, but--since you have set me the example of plain speaking--I will answer that I do not believe you!), but you will not do it! you choose rather to leave us miserable; and you coolly tell me it is the will of God that we should remain so. You may call this religion, but I call it wild fanaticism!'
`There is another life both for you and for me,' said I. `If it be the will of--God that we should sow in tears, now, it is only that we may reap in joy, hereafter.* It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends, who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I too have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment--or yours either, with my consent--and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion,* and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with Heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness--happiness sure to end in misery, even here--for myself or any other!'
`There need be no disgrace--no misery or sacrifice in any quarter,' persisted he. `I do not ask you to leave your home or defy the world's opinion. `--But I need not repeat all his arguments. I refuted them to the best of my power; but that power was provokingly small, at the moment, for I was too much flurried with indignation--and even shame--that he should thus dare to address me, to retain sufficient command of thought and language to enable me adequately to contend against his powerful sophistries. Finding, however, that he could not be silenced by reason, and even covertly exulted in his seeming advantage, and ventured to deride those assertions I had not the coolness to prove, I changed my course and tried another plan.
`Do you really love me?' said I seriously, pausing and looking him calmly in the face.