'Because my love for you is without selfishness, and I wish you to be happy even though another makes you so. The lover, or the husband, who wishes the woman of his affection to form no second attachment, is, in my opinion, a selfish, contemptible being. Perhaps I do not expect that you will ever feel, for another man, an attachment like that which has subsisted between us—the first affection of young and impassioned hearts; but I am sure that you may again feel love enough to make yourself and the man of your choice perfectly happy; and I hope and trust that you will be so.'
'And forget you, I suppose?' interrupted Adeline reproachfully.
'Not so: I would have you remember me always, but with a chastized and even a pleasing sorrow; nay, I would wish you to imagine me a sort of guardian spirit watching your actions and enjoying your happiness.'
'I have listened to you,' cried Adeline in a tone of suppressed anguish, 'and, I trust, with tolerable patience: there is one thing yet for me to learn—the name of the object whom you wish me to marry, for I suppose he is found.'
'He is,' returned Glenmurray, 'Berrendale loves you; and he it is whom I wish you to choose.'
'I thought so,' exclaimed Adeline, rising and traversing the room hastily, and wringing her hands.
'But wherefore does his name,' said Glenmurray, 'excite such angry emotion? Perhaps self-love makes me recommend him,' continued he, forcing a smile, 'as he is reckoned like me, and I thought that likeness might make him more agreeable to you.'
'Only the more odious,' impatiently interrupted Adeline. 'To look like you, and not be you, Oh! insupportable idea!' she exclaimed, throwing herself on Glenmurray's pillow, and pressing his burning temples to her cold cheek.
'Adeline,' said Glenmurray solemnly, 'this is, perhaps, the last moment of confidential and uninterrupted intercourse that we shall ever have together;' Adeline started, but spoke not; 'allow me, therefore, to tell you it is my dying request, that you would endeavour to dispose your mind in favour of Berrendale, and to become in time his wife. Circumstanced as you are, your only chance for happiness is becoming a wife: but it is too certain that few men worthy of you, in the most essential points, will be likely to marry you after your connexion with me.'
'Strange prejudice!' cried Adeline, 'to consider as my disgrace, what I deem my glory!'