“I have told you enough—enough to decide your fate. I must not tell you more!”
“Yes, and without any reason assigned, you have pronounced a sentence of excommunication and outlawry against me; a sentence that cuts me off from the comforts of religion and the intercourse of society; a sentence that dooms me to a fate worse, infinitely worse than death. But, mother, without a reason that shall convince my own judgment, and satisfy my own conscience, I cannot, and ought not, to accept that sentence or submit to that fate!” said Alma, with gentle firmness.
“Rash girl, what do you mean by that?”
“I mean, mamma, that, though I may obey your hard commands while I am a minor, even though obedience may destroy my life or reason, as it may, but when I am free, mamma, as every one ought to be at some period of their life, I must redeem my plighted troth by bestowing my hand upon that Norham Montrose to whom even you acknowledge that you have no personal objection whatever. This is all I mean, mamma.”
“But in the interval you will meet him and converse with him often?”
“No, mother, I will not seek to see him; I will even try to avoid him.”
“But if he should throw himself in your way, or happen to meet you and speak to you, you would answer him—you would converse with him?”
“I wish I could promise you that I would not, mamma; but oh, I could not keep such a promise, believe me I could not,” said Alma, convulsed with sobs.
“I do believe you; and that belief forces me at length to speak that word—that word which must sever you at once and forever from him and from all others—that word which may sink into your heart and corrode your life until you are as bloodless as I am; or, that may kill you at once—strike you down dead before me! Be it so; better you should die than live to marry,” said the lady, rising and approaching her daughter, while the grayness of death again overspread her pallid face.
Alma, with a dreadful sickness of the heart, waited to hear some fatal communication.