“O Harold!” she exclaimed, “dost thou remember that in the old time I said, ‘Edith had loved thee less, if thou hadst not loved England more than Edith?’ Recall, recall those words. And deemest thou now that I, who have gazed for years into thy clear soul, and learned there to sun my woman’s heart in the light of all glories native to noblest man, deemest thou, O Harold, that I am weaker now than then, when I scarce knew what England and glory were?”
“Edith, Edith, what wouldst thou say?—What knowest thou?—Who hath told thee?—What led thee hither, to take part against thyself?”
“It matters not who told me; I know all. What led me? Mine own soul, and mine own love!” Springing to her feet and clasping his hand in both hers, while she looked into his face, she resumed: “I do not say to thee, ‘Grieve not to part;’ for I know too well thy faith, thy tenderness—thy heart, so grand and so soft. But I do say, ‘Soar above thy grief, and be more than man for the sake of men!’ Yes, Harold, for this last time I behold thee. I clasp thy hand, I lean on thy heart, I hear its beating, and I shall go hence without a tear.”
“It cannot, it shall not be!” exclaimed Harold, passionately. “Thou deceivest thyself in the divine passion of the hour: thou canst not foresee the utterness of the desolation to which thou wouldst doom thy life. We were betrothed to each other by ties strong as those of the Church,—over the grave of the dead, under the vault of heaven, in the form of ancestral faith! The bond cannot be broken. If England demands me, let England take me with the ties it were unholy, even for her sake, to rend!”
“Alas, alas!” faltered Edith, while the flush on her cheek sank into mournful paleness. “It is not as thou sayest. So has thy love sheltered me from the world—so utter was my youth’s ignorance or my heart’s oblivion of the stern laws of man, that when it pleased thee that we should love each other, I could not believe that that love was sin; and that it was sin hitherto I will not think;—now it hath become one.”
“No, no!” cried Harold; all the eloquence on which thousands had hung, thrilled and spell-bound, deserting him in that hour of need, and leaving to him only broken exclamations,—fragments, in each of which has his heart itself seemed shivered; “no, no,—not sin!—sin only to forsake thee.—Hush! hush!—This is a dream—wait till we wake! True heart! noble soul!—I will not part from thee!”
“But I from thee! And rather than thou shouldst be lost for my sake—the sake of woman—to honour and conscience, and all for which thy sublime life sprang from the hands of Nature—if not the cloister, may I find the grave!—Harold, to the last let me be worthy of thee; and feel, at least, that if not thy wife—that bright, that blessed fate not mine!—still, remembering Edith, just men may say, ‘She would not have dishonoured the hearth of Harold!’”
“Dost thou know,” said the Earl, striving to speak calmly, “dost thou know that it is not only to resign thee that they demand—that it is to resign thee, and for another?”
“I know it,” said Edith; and two burning tears, despite her strong and preternatural self-exaltation, swelled from the dark fringe, and rolled slowly down the colourless cheek, as she added, with proud voice, “I know it: but that other is not Aldyth, it is England! In her, in Aldyth, behold the dear cause of thy native land; with her enweave the love which thy native land should command. So thinking, thou art reconciled, and I consoled. It is not for woman that thou desertest Edith.”
“Hear, and take from those lips the strength and the valour that belong to the name of Hero!” said a deep and clear voice behind; and Gurth,—who, whether distrusting the result of an interview so prolonged, or tenderly desirous to terminate its pain, had entered unobserved,—approached, and wound his arm caressingly round his brother. “Oh, Harold!” he said, “dear to me as the drops in my heart is my young bride, newly wed; but if for one tithe of the claims that now call thee to the torture and trial—yea, if but for one hour of good service to freedom and law—I would consent without a groan to behold her no more. And if men asked me how I could so conquer man’s affections, I would point to thee, and say, ‘So Harold taught my youth by his lessons, and my manhood by his life.’ Before thee, visible, stand Happiness and Love, but with them, Shame; before thee, invisible, stands Woe, but with Woe are England and eternal Glory! Choose between them.”