“What sum will you take for them?”
“They shall be yours unbought, Loo, if you will but hear me.
“I want the letters; tell me their price.”
“The price is simply one meeting—one opportunity to clear myself before you—to show you how for years my heart has clung to you.”
“I cannot buy them at this cost. Tell me how much money you will have for them.”
“It is your wish to outrage, to insult me, then?” muttered he, in a voice thick with passion.
“Now you are natural; now you are yourself; and now I can speak to you. Tell me your price.”
“Your shame!—your open degradation! The spectacle of your exposure before all Europe, when it shall have been read in every language and talked of in every city.”
“I have looked for that hour for many a year, Paul Hunt, and its arrival would be mercy, compared with the daily menace of one like you.”
“The story of the murder again revived; the life you led, the letters themselves revealing it; the orphan child robbed of her inheritance; the imposture of your existence abroad here!—what variety in the scenes! what diversity in the interests!”