“My dearest, do you suppose for a moment that it is really against her will? I do not,” laughed the Free Sword.
“It is bitterly against her will! I do not understand how it can be so; since I know that she loved him once! but I see that it is!” said his wife, earnestly.
Colonel Corsoni gayly shook his head.
“It is, indeed, as I say! Strange as it may sound, she seems really to hate the lover she once loved so fondly!”
“And for no personal offence against her? For a mere difference of opinion in regard to this war? Impossible! Dearest, you should know that no woman who truly loved, ever discarded her lover for a mere difference of opinion in religion or politics! And that Elfie truly loved Albert, and even sought to win his love, I had an opportunity of proving! Oh, I watched them with too much interest in the play to be mistaken! I was too anxious that the little black-eyed witch should win him, and so remove a troublesome suitor to yourself and a hateful rival from my path; not to have discovered the truth!”
“Oh yes, I know that she did once love him, and seek to win and succeed in winning his heart! But all that is over now!”
“And has a woman the right, do you think, to win a man’s heart and then throw it away?”
“No, certainly!”
“See here, dearest; she not only loved him and won his love; but she betrothed herself to him. And he at least has been faithful to that betrothal. Listen, my own! If Elfrida were not the promised wife of Goldsborough, I would not look on for an instant and permit her to be carried off by him; or, being his promised wife, if her feelings had really changed towards him, I would not interfere to deliver her from his power. But neither of these hypotheses exist. At heart she loves him still; loves him more than ever, that he has proved his love, by daring so much for her sake! But Elfie is given to heroics—real heroics and mock heroics. She has embraced the cause of the Union! It is her cue to hate ‘treason’ and to love ‘patriotism.’ And left to herself she will sacrifice her lover, whom she adores, for her country that she only thinks she adores! But let Goldsborough succeed in carrying her off, and making her his wife, by force if you like to call it so, and Elfie will be as happy as a queen in the greenwood.”
“But only see how she resisted her abduction! See how she wounded her captor in her struggles to escape!”