Mr. Hargrave advanced one step towards me, looked me in the face, and drew in his breath to speak; but that look, that heightened colour, that sudden sparkle of the eye, made my blood rise in wrath: I abruptly turned away, and, snatching up my brush, began to dash away at my canvas with rather too much energy for the good of the picture.
“Mrs. Huntingdon,” said he with bitter solemnity, “you are cruel—cruel to me—cruel to yourself.”
“Mr. Hargrave, remember your promise.”
“I must speak: my heart will burst if I don’t! I have been silent long enough, and you must hear me!” cried he, boldly intercepting my retreat to the door. “You tell me you owe no allegiance to your husband; he openly declares himself weary of you, and calmly gives you up to anybody that will take you; you are about to leave him; no one will believe that you go alone; all the world will say, ‘She has left him at last, and who can wonder at it? Few can blame her, fewer still can pity him; but who is the companion of her flight?’ Thus you will have no credit for your virtue (if you call it such): even your best friends will not believe in it; because it is monstrous, and not to be credited but by those who suffer, from the effects of it, such cruel torments that they know it to be indeed reality. But what can you do in the cold, rough world alone? you, a young and inexperienced woman, delicately nurtured, and utterly—”
“In a word, you would advise me to stay where I am,” interrupted I. “Well, I’ll see about it.”
“By all means, leave him!” cried he earnestly; “but NOT alone! Helen! let me protect you!”
“Never! while heaven spares my reason,” replied I, snatching away the hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own. But he was in for it now; he had fairly broken the barrier: he was completely roused, and determined to hazard all for victory.
“I must not be denied!” exclaimed he, vehemently; and seizing both my hands, he held them very tight, but dropped upon his knee, and looked up in my face with a half-imploring, half-imperious gaze. “You have no reason now: you are flying in the face of heaven’s decrees. God has designed me to be your comfort and protector—I feel it, I know it as certainly as if a voice from heaven declared, ‘Ye twain shall be one flesh’—and you spurn me from you—”
“Let me go, Mr. Hargrave!” said I, sternly. But he only tightened his grasp.
“Let me go!” I repeated, quivering with indignation.