After he had brought his narrative up to the events of Venice, he paused, and Lieberg replied--"I had known something of all this, Morley, but not accurately, and I see I have made several mistakes in dealing with you. I did not know that you loved her so intensely. You may think me light, but my passions and attachments are as strong, or stronger than your own. I believed that you would have acted, if you truly loved her, as I would have acted under similar circumstances, that you would have pursued her, struggled against her resolutions, combated her arguments, set at nought idle vows, and ultimately won her for your happiness and for her own. But I forgot, Morley, that you are less experienced in all things than I am, and though passion may give the impetus to action, it is experience that must guide it to success. I forgot this, I say, and fancying that you loved her with one of those half loves, which may be diverted by pleasures and occupations, or swallowed up in another attachment, I endeavoured to lead your mind upon a course it could not follow. Now, however, I am convinced that you do love--at least I believe so, but I shall soon see, by the steps which you once take when your eyes are open. You seem to think that she has true affection for you; and, though from your agitation now, I suppose you have seen her again, and that she has once more treated you with the same cruel coldness, if you do love her, you will pursue her with that vigour of determination which will sweep away all obstacles. There is a might in real passion to which all inferior things soon bow, and which woman's heart can never resist, even for an hour, when once convinced that it is truly present. But that conviction cannot be produced by any sign of weakness,--you must show her that you love her, as none but strong and powerful hearts can love. That you are resolved to possess her, or to die----"
"Vain, vain, vain!" cried Morley, in bitterness of spirit. "It is all now in vain; she did love me; but driven by some promise extorted by her father, I suppose, she is now the wife of another!"
Lieberg started, and gazed upon him in surprise, then grasped his arm, and with his dark star-like eyes fixed on his face, exclaimed--"Take her from him! What right has he to possess her? Is she not yours? Yours by the bond of the heart's affection--yours by the tie that is beyond the earth--yours by the union of spirit with spirit! Talk not to me of human laws and ordinances, where the soul itself recognises a rule that is defined. You are her husband, if with the true intensity of heaven's own fire you love her and she loves you. You are her husband, I say, and every hour of her union with another is adultery. Take her from him, Morley--take her from him, be he who he may. Scruple at no means, stop at no pitiful considerations; it is due to her as well as to yourself--it is due to her in every sense. Think, think of the long and lasting misery that she must endure. Do you not know--are you not sure that every hour she must recollect you? What human ordinance will blot you out from her memory? What empty words, spoken at an altar, will erase from her heart the husband of her early dreams. Morley, if you are a lover--if you are a man--you will spare that sweet, mistaken girl the hell-fire tenderness of him whom she cannot love!"
"Hush, hush, hush!" cried Morley. "You will drive me mad!"
"You are mad already, Morley", replied Lieberg, "or you would fly to her at once. You would show her the brow which she loves, scathed with the lightning of passion, the form of him to whom she promised heaven, blighted by the consuming hell of disappointed affection. You would call upon her to remedy the wrong that she has committed--you would urge her with those words of power, the omnipotent magic of love, to save you from despair, destruction, and death, and to give you back the joy of which she has robbed you."
Thus did he proceed, reader, adding to the words he spoke, that overpowering eloquence of look, gesture, and tone, which has far more effect than language, but can never be described. Let it be remembered, too, that this was addressed to Morley Ernstein at a moment when the whole powers of his mind were shaken by the agony he endured, when reason herself tottered on her throne, and despair had broken down the great prop of all good principle--hope. He sat and listened, not without a knowledge that there was wrong and evil in the words he heard; but it was as a man for whom all life's joys and expectations are extinct, and who, in a moment of frenzied desperation, takes quietly the cup he knows to be poisoned, and drains it with a bitter smile.
At length, however, he rose, and said, "Lieberg, I will leave you for to-night. I cannot converse with any one--my story is scarcely told, but a few words more will do it. She is married to a man as old as her father--to a Lord Clavering--"
"Why, he is just gone to England!" exclaimed Lieberg.
"I know it," answered Morley, "and has left her here."
"Fly to her, Morley--fly to her!" cried Lieberg, grasping his hand--"fly to her this very night!"