"Gabriella, you mock me!" he exclaimed, suddenly rising and speaking in a low, stern voice. "You know that you are yourself the cause of my grief, and your words are as hollow as your actions are vain. Did you not promise, solemnly promise never to deceive me again, after having caused me such agony by the deception I yet freely forgave?"
"Tell me, Ernest, in what have I deceived? If I know myself, every word and action has been as clear and open as noonday."
"Did you ever tell me your teacher was your lover,—he with whom you were so intimately associated when I first knew you? You suffered me to believe that he was to you in the relation almost of a father. I received him as such in my own home. I lavished upon him every hospitable attention, as the friend and guide of your youth, and now you suffer me to hear from others that his romantic love was the theme of village gossip, that your names are still associated by idle tongues."
"I always believed before that unrequited love was not a theme for vain boasting, that it was a secret too sacred to be divulged even to the dearest and the nearest."
"But every one who has been so unfortunate as to be associated with you, seems to have been the victims of unrequited love. The name of Richard Clyde is familiar to all as the model of despairing lovers, and even Dr. Harlowe addresses you in a strain of unpardonable levity."
"O Ernest, cannot you spare even him?"
"You asked me the cause of my displeasure, and I have told you the source of my grief, otherwise I had been silent. There must be something wrong, Gabriella, or you would not be the subject of such remarks. Edith, all lovely as she is, passes on without exciting them. The most distant allusion to a lover should be considered an insult by a wedded woman and most especially in her husband's presence."
"I have never sought admiration or love," said I, every feeling of delicacy and pride rising to repel an insinuation so unjust. "When they have been mine, they were spontaneous gifts, offered nobly, and if not accepted, at least declined with gratitude and sensibility. If I have been so unfortunate as to win what your lovely sister might more justly claim, it has been by the exercise of no base allurement or meritricious attractions. I appeal to your own experience, and if it does not acquit me, I am for ever silent."
Coldly and proudly my eye met his, as we stood face to face in the light of the midnight moon. I, who had looked up to him with the reverence due to a superior being, felt that I was above him now. He was the slave of an unjust passion, the dupe of a distempered fancy, and as such unworthy of my respect and love. As I admitted this truth, I shuddered with that vague horror we feel in dreams, when we recoil from the brink of something, we know not what. I trembled when his lips opened, fearful he would say something more irrational and unmanly still.
"O Ernest!" I cried, all at once yielding to the emotions that were bearing me down with such irresistible power, "you frighten me, you fill me with unspeakable dread. There seems a deep abyss yawning between us, and I stand upon one icy brink and you on the other, and the chasm widens, and I stretch out my arms in vain to reach you, and I call, and nothing but a dreary echo answers, and I look into my heart and do not find you there. Save me, Ernest, save me,—my husband, save yourself from a doom so dreadful!"