“Condescension!” repeated she, disdainfully. “Condescension! Yes—you say well. You did not expect me!” continued she, in a tone of withering sarcasm. “I am sorry for your disappointment. I am sorry the gentle Helen did not see fit to leave her downy bed, and warm room, braving the inclemency of the wintry blast, to minister to her waiting lover. It is a wondrous pity.”
Then changing her accent, and bursting into a strain of the most impassioned emotion—
“Oh, my soul! was it for this I came forth alone, in darkness and stealth, like the felon whose den I sought? Is it on such a being as this, I have wasted such boundless wealth of love? Father, mother, brother, sister—all vainly urged their claims upon my heart. It was marble—it was ice to them. They thought I was made of stone, granite; would to Heaven I were. But you, Clinton; but you breathed upon the rock, you softened, you warmed; and now, wretch, you grind it into powder. You melted the ice—and having drained the waters, you have left a dry and burning channel—here.”
Mittie pressed her hand upon her heart, with a gesture of pain, and began to traverse wildly the narrow cell; her cloak, which had fallen back from her shoulders, sweeping in the dust. Every passion was wrestling for mastery in her bosom.
“Why,” she exclaimed, suddenly stopping and gazing fixedly upon him, “why did you make me conscious of this terrible vitality? What motive had you for crossing my path, and like Attila, the destroyer, withering every green blade beneath my feet? I had never wronged you. What motive, I ask, had you for deceiving and mocking me, who so madly trusted, so blindly worshipped?”
“Spare me, Mittie,” exclaimed the humbled and convicted Clinton. “Trample not on a fallen wretch, who has nothing to say in his defence. But one thing I will say, I have not intended to deceive you. I did love you, and felt at the time all that I professed. Had you loved me less, I had been more constant. But why, let me ask, have you sought me here, to upbraid me for my inconstancy? What good can it do to you or to me? You call me a wretch: and I acknowledge myself to be one, a vile, ungrateful wretch. Call me a thief, if you will, if the word does not blister your tongue to utter it. I confess it all. Now leave me to my fate.”
“Confess one thing more,” said Mittie, “speak to me as if it were your dying hour—for you will soon be dead to me, and tell me, if it is for the love of Helen you abandon mine?”
Clinton hesitated, a red color flushed his pallid cheek. He could not at that moment, in the presence of such deep and true passion, utter a falsehood; and degraded as he was, he could not bear to inflict the pain an avowal of the truth might cause.
“Speak,” she urged, “and speak truly. It is all the atonement I ask.”
“My love can only reflect disgrace on its object. Rejoice that it rests on her, rather than yourself. But she has avenged your wrongs. She rejected me before my hand was polluted with this last foul crime. She upbraided me for my perfidy to you, and fled from my sight with horror. Had she loved me, I might have been saved—but I am lost now.”