"Yes; he has, little as you are disposed to acknowledge it. You do not seem to know that he can compel your submission!"
"Can he!" she hissed, drawing her breath sharply through her clenched teeth, and clutching her fingers convulsively, while a white ring gleamed around the blue iris of her dilated eyes. "Let him try! let him drive me to desperation, and then learn how spirits dare to escape! But he will not do that. Mimmy! he reads me better than you do; he knows that he must not urge me beyond my powers of endurance. No, mother! Let him take my uncle into his counsels again, if he pleases; let them combine all their ingenuity, and wickedness, and power, and bring them all to bear on me at once; let them do their worst—they shall not gain one concession from me; not one smile, not one word, not one single look of tolerance—so help me heaven! And they know it, mother!—they know it! And why? You are secured from their malice; now they can turn no screws upon my heart-strings!—and I am free! They know it, mother—they know it, if you do not."
"But, Jacquelina, this is a very, very wicked life to lead! You are living in a state of mortal sin while you persist in this shocking rebellion against the authority and just rights of your husband."
"He is not my husband! that I utterly deny! I have never made him such! There was nothing in our nominal marriage to give him that claim. It was a mere legal form, for a mercenary purpose. It was a wicked and shameful subterfuge; a sacrilegious desecration of God's holy altar! but in its wickedness heaven knows I had little will! I was deluded and disturbed; facts were misrepresented to me, threats were made that could never have been executed; my fears were excited for your life; my affections were wrought upon; I was driven out of my senses even before I did consent to be his nominal wife—the legal sumpter-mule to carry him an estate. I promised nothing more, and I have kept all my promises. It is over! it is over! it is done! and it cannot be undone! But I never—never will forgive that man for the part he played in the drama!"
"Ave Maria, Mater Dolorosa! Was ever a mother so sorrowful as I? Holy saints and angels! how you shock me. Don't you know, wretched child, that you are committing deadly sin? Don't you know, alas! the holy church would refuse you its communion?"
"Let it! I will be excommunicated before I will give Dr. Grimshaw one tolerant glance! I will risk the eternal rather than fall into the nearer perdition!"
"Holy Mary save her! Don't you know, most miserable child! that such is your condition, that if you were to die now your soul would go to burning flames?"
"Ha! ha! Where do you think it is now, Mimmy?"
"You are mad! You don't know what you're talking about! And, alas! you are half an infidel, I know, for you don't believe in hell!"
"Yes, I do, Mimmy! Oh! yes, indeed I do! If ever my faith was shaken in that article of belief, it is firm enough now! It is more than re-established, for, look you, Mimmy! I believe in heaven, but I know of hell!"