"Then," she said, "my patience would be at an end, and I would scatter your vile frame to the four winds of heaven!"
"Lady Venus," said Leander, getting up with a white and desperate face, "don't drive me into a corner. I can't go off, not at a moment's notice—in either way! I—I must have a day—only a day—to make my arrangements in. Give me a day, Lady Venus; I ask it as a partickler favour!"
"Be it so," she said. "One day I give you in which to take leave of such as may be dear to you; but, after that, I will listen to no further pleadings. You are mine, and, all unworthy as you are, I shall hold you to your pledge!"
Leander was left with this terrible warning ringing in his ears: the goddess would hold him to his involuntary pledge. Even he could see that it was pride, and not affection, which rendered her so determined; and he trembled at the thought of placing himself irrevocably in her power.
But what was he to do? The alternative was too awful; and then, in either case, he must lose Matilda. Here the recollection of how he had left her came over him with a vivid force. What must she be thinking of him at that moment? And who would ever tell her the truth, when he had been spirited away for ever?
"Oh, Matilda!" he cried, "if you only knew the hidgeous position I'm in—if you could only advise me what to do—I could bear it better!"
And then he resolved that he would ask that advice without delay, and decide nothing until she replied. There was no reason for any further concealment: she had seen the statue herself, and must know the worst. What she could not know was his perfect innocence of any real unfaithfulness to her, and that he must explain.
He sat up all night composing a letter that should touch her to the heart, with the following result:—
"My own dearest Girl,
"If such you will still allow me to qualify you, I write to you in a state of mind that I really 'ardly know what I am about, but I cannot indure making no effort to clear up the gaping abiss which the events of the past fatal afternoon has raised betwixt us.