“Have you any objection to playing a tune for me?” he asked, with the timid air of a Corydon.
Clara seated herself at the piano and began playing Beethoven’s Sonatas, commencing with the first. Ratcliff was horribly bored. After he had listened for what seemed to him an intolerable period, he interrupted the performance by saying, “All that is very fine, but I fear it is fatiguing to you.”
“Not at all. I can go through the whole book without fatigue.”
“Don’t think of it! What have you here? ‘Willis’s Poems.’ Are you fond of poetry, Miss Murray?”
“I am fond of poetry; but my name is not Murray.”
“Indeed! What may it then be?”
“My name is Berwick. I am no slave, though kidnapped and sold as such while an infant. You bought me. But you would not lend yourself to a fraud, would you? I must be free. You shall be paid with interest for all your outlays in my behalf. Is not that fair?”
“I am too much interested in your welfare, my dear young lady, to consent to giving you up. You will find it impossible to prove this fanciful story which some unfriendly person has put into your head. Even if it were true, you could never recover your rights. But it is all chimerical. Don’t indulge so illusory a hope. What I offer, on the other hand, is substantial, solid, certain. As my wife you would be lifted at once to a position second to that of no lady in the land.”
Clara inadvertently gave way to a shudder of dislike. Ratcliff noticed it, and rising, drew nearer to her and asked, “Have I ever given you any cause for aversion?”
“Yes,” she replied, starting up from the music-chair,—“the cause which the master must always give the slave.”