‘Pshaw! Will that gratify my desires?’
‘It will afford me a far greater gratification.’
‘I shall not try it.’
‘Alas! you are indeed a guilty miscreant.’
‘Thank you, again, for your compliment; I have pointed out to you the horrors that will attend your refusal; say, shall I point out to you the happiness that will attend you, if you comply with my request?’
‘I want not to hear them, they cannot make any alteration in my determination,’ answered our heroine, covering her face with her handkerchief, and sobbing aloud with her disgusted and wounded feelings.
‘Still must I think that you will change your mind;’ returned Blodget with the same guilty expression of countenance in which his features were almost constantly clad—‘remember the sweets of liberty will then be yours.’
‘And of what use would liberty be to me, when it would be purchased by a life of infamy?’ demanded Inez; ‘could anything ever reconcile it to my conscience, to become the base paramour of a guilty being like you? The bare thought fills me with a sensation of the utmost dread, and death in its most horrible form would be preferable to such a course of life.’
‘But is there nothing that could prevail upon you?’
‘Nothing;’ answered Inez, with a look of the greatest disgust and horror.