"And what I should never have told you, were it not my only chance of curing you of this foolish passion. I am an American slave!"
"Curse them! Who dared make you a slave?" cried Scoutbush, turning as red as a game-cock.
"I was born a slave. My father was a white gentleman of good family: my mother was a quadroon; and therefore I am a slave;—a negress, a runaway slave, my lord, who, if I returned to America, should be seized, and chained, and scourged, and sold.—Do you understand me?"
"What an infernal shame!" cried Scoutbush, to whom the whole thing appeared simply as a wrong done to Marie.
"Well, my lord?"
"Well, madam?"
"Does not this fact put the question at rest for ever?"
"No, madam! What do I know about slaves? No one is a slave in England. No madam; all that it does is to make me long to cut half-a-dozen fellows' throats—" and Scoutbush stamped with rage. "No, madam, you are you: and if you become my viscountess, you take my rank, I trust, and my name is yours, and my family yours; and let me see who dare interfere!"
"But public opinion, my lord?" said Marie, half-pleased, half-terrified to find the shaft which she had fancied fatal fall harmless at her feet.
"Public opinion? You don't know England, madam! What's the use of my being a peer, if I can't do what I like, and make public opinion go my way, and not I its? Though I am no great prince, madam, but only a poor Irish viscount, it's hard if I can't marry whom I like—in reason, that is—and expect all the world to call on her, and treat her as she deserves. Why, madam, you will have all London at your feet after a season or two, and all the more if they know your story: or if you don't like that, or if fools did talk at first, why we'd go and live quietly at Kilanbaggan, or at Penalva, and you'd have all the tenants looking up to you as a goddess, as I do, madam.—Oh, madam, I would go anywhere, live anywhere, only to be with you!"