“What! would you break your engagement to me—and at the last moment?”
“Yes; for a sufficient reason.”
“But I will not consent to it.”
“I do not ask your consent. I break it.”
“Nettie!”
“Hugh! stoop down here! nearer—there. Hugh!” she said tenderly, running her pale fingers through the dark waves of hair each side his massive forehead, and holding his head between her hands as she gazed fondly in his face—“Hugh! I know you love me. I have never doubted it one single moment. And I do love you. So much—so much, Hugh, I love you so much that, to save my own immortal soul I would not marry you.”
“You dare not refuse me. I claim your plighted faith. I claim you for my wife,” exclaimed Hugh Hutton passionately.
“To save you I dare refuse you. To save you I dare break my plighted faith, and take the sin upon my own soul. Hugh! dear Hugh! in one great contest I yielded to you, because high principle was on your side. But this is a different matter; I am as inexorable as Death.”
“Nettie! Nettie! I am strong; but your loss would paralyze me. But oh! it cannot be. I will never, never leave you nor forsake you. If I do, may God abandon my own soul!”
Her features were convulsed again, and for a moment she concealed them with her hands; then laying her hands tenderly upon the head of her kneeling companion, she said: