“He has expostulated with me;” Claude responded; “yet not with too much earnestness, knowing love's fires are blown by opposition. How seems your guardian?”
“How shall I dare to meet him!” murmured Amanda musing.
“Do not fear him;” Claude rejoined: “he will not chide you;—besides, you shall be gone to-morrow. I come to-night, a Jason for the golden fleece, and may not return without it. Stillyside is Colchis, and my desires are dolphins that have brought me hither, and will not, returning, ferry me across the Ottawa, unless they shall be freighted with your form. Mine own one, do not stand transfixed like death in life, but live here no longer; leave it, and live with me for ever, for from where you are my feet shall never stray. Do not misdoubt me: though man were as faithless as it is said that woman is fickle, yet I were loyal towards you, whom I implore to be my affianced to-night, my bride to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!—Oh, so soon,” exclaimed Amanda, starting.
“It will be a thousand years till then;” interposed Montigny; “and yet it will be the glad millenium, since you shall reign amidst my meditations, and towards you all my thoughts be worshipping saints. This dumb devotion will be bliss, but to have sealed you mine by the great sacrament of marriage will be glory, such as the saved soul experiences when, in Heaven sitting, it feels itself secure, and proof against the possibility of loss. Accord me your consent. Why do you ponder? wherefore should you hesitate? Amanda, be immediately mine. What are your thoughts? What are you that transports me with impatience out of myself, to mingle with your being, and become one with yourself in history and fate? Our fate commands; let us obey it, since, what is fate's behest, but Heaven's directing voice; what is our destiny, but the deed which we perceive may not be left undone.”
“Rash man, forbear;” pronounced Amanda, her face darkening with displeasure; “you counsel me to evil. Though I would esteem you as I would some annunciating angel, beyond impeachment of veracity, and bent on a generous errand, you seem as a fallen spirit now; tempting me, not enlightening. No, Montigny, no. Shall I deceive my guardian so kind, shall I defraud your house, your father, you? I, who have no fortune, nor—as is your lot—upon my name, neither the rime and hoar of silver, new renown, nor golden rust of brown antiquity,—the dust of ages in heroic deeds, lying on your escutcheon, dyeing it as the dust that dapples the bright insect's wings;—shall I, I say, come and lie like to a bar sinister across it? for what else should I be considered by your indignant friends, except, indeed, a shadow on your brightness, a shame across your honour?” and she hung her head in despairing sadness, whilst Montigny thus replied:
“Oh, shame on me, to hear you so self-slandered! Friends! mistaken friends. And what although my father and the world esteemed you my inferior; what were their estimation unto me; and, compared with you, what is the value of heraldic honours and traditionary glory heaped upon the dead, which is, in truth, too often only as the phosphorescent glimmer that hangs upon decay: what are these gauds to me, who count you to be far above the worth of monumental effigy, or marble mask, my living love; whom I will set,—not in the tomb of cold, pale porphyry, nor in a sable, slabbed sarcophagus, but breathing, and enshrined in fortune's framing gold. Fastidious girl, and prouder than the proud Montignys, listen to me, listen. We are two stranger vessels that have met upon the highway of the lonely sea;—we are as two ships that, being long from port, have, sailing, met, and exchanged one with the other, what each has needed and what each could spare; we have bartered heart for heart. Have you not given me yours? If you have not, why, then, return me mine.”
“Then were I poor indeed,” replied Amanda.
“Yet I were poorer without yours,” retorted Claude, “poorer than he who begs his bread. I wish I had to beg my bread for you, then richly should you fare; for who, when I should crave for love of you, (as mendicants ask alms for love of heaven), could then refuse me? Oh, refuse no longer my request. Estimate not my fortune, but appraise myself; and whatsoever you may deem to be my value, account your own worth as being ten thousand times that sum. Still take me, a mere miserable doit; an earnest, an instalment towards the payment of the debt of love and loyalty, that shall require a life to liquidate, then leave me bankrupt in untold arrears.”
“I should forgive the debt, even before you could have asked forgiveness,” replied Amanda, smiling, though much moved; “and yet I would not leave you perfectly absolved, but still retain you by some small reminder, some power of execution over you—not to be exercised towards you to your hurt—far from it, but I would be absolute that I might shew you mercy; even as noblest kings have been despotic, and in their day have delighted in dispensing pardon. So would I be towards you;—or even as the King of Kings—to speak it reverently—who, of His boundless goodness and free grace, remits the debts and manifold trespasses of us, his poor, defaulting creatures.”