She was now departing.
'You distract me!' cried he, with vehemence, 'you distract me!' He caught her gown, but, upon her stopping, instantly let it go. Pale and affrighted, 'Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'is it to you I must own a scene that may raise wonder and surmises in the house, and aggravate distresses and embarrassments which, already, I find nearly intolerable?'
Shocked and affected, he shut the door, and would impetuously, yet tenderly, have taken her hand; but, upon her shrinking back, with displeasure and alarm, he more quietly said, 'Pardon! pardon! and before you condemn me inexorably to submit to such rigorous disdain and contempt—'
'Why will you use such words? Contempt?—Good heaven!' she began, with an emotion that almost instantly subsided, and she added, 'Yet of what consequence to you ought to be my sensations, my opinions?' They can avail you nothing! Let me go,—and let me conjure you to be gone!'
'You are then decided against me?' cried he, in a voice scarcely articulate.
'I am,' she answered, without looking at him, but calmly.
He bowed, with an air that relinquished all further attempt to detain her; but which shewed him too much wounded to speak.
Carefully still avoiding his eyes, she was moving off; but, when she touched the lock of the door, he exclaimed, 'Will you not, at least, before you go, allow me to address a few words to you as a friend? simply,—undesignedly,—only as a friend?'
'Ah! Mr Harleigh!' cried Ellis, irresistibly softened, 'as a friend could I, indeed, have trusted you, I might long since,—perhaps,—have confided in your liberality and benevolence: but now, 'tis wholly impossible!'
'No!' exclaimed he, warmly, and touched to the soul; 'nothing is impossible that you wish to effect! Hear me, then, trust and speak to me as a friend; a faithful, a cordial, a disinterested friend! Confide to me your name—your situation—the motives to your concealment—the causes that can induce such mystery of appearance, in one whose mind is so evidently the seat of the clearest purity:—the reasons of such disguise—'