"Rosamond, hear me—I beseech you!" exclaimed the baronet, as he held her by the arms in such a manner that she could not escape from the bed. "Hear reason, if you can! What would you do? Whither can you fly? The past cannot be recalled; but there is much to think of for the future. The occurrence of this night is a secret known only to yourself and to me: your dishonour need never transpire to the world?"
"Oh! my God! my God!" murmured Rosamond, in a tone of ineffable anguish: "my dishonour!—my dishonour!"
And she repeated the word—the terrible word, in so thrilling, penetrating, and yet subdued a voice, that even the remorseless baronet was for a moment touched.
"O Rosamond!" he said, in a hurried and excited manner; "do not repine so bitterly for what cannot be recalled! Think how I love you, dearest one—remember that my passion for thee amounted to a frenzy,—and it was in frenzy that I acted thus. Instead of loathing me——"
"No—no, I do not loathe you!—my God—no!" said Rosamond, becoming the least degree calmer. "I now perceive how dependant I am upon you—how necessary it is that your love should console me! But my dear father—should he learn his daughter's disgrace—Oh! heaven, have mercy upon me!"
And she once more burst into an agony of weeping.
"Rosamond—Rosamond, compose yourself!" said Sir Henry Courtenay, with that tenderness of tone which he so well knew how to assume, and on which he had so much relied as an emollient means to be applied to soothe the grief of the victim of his desires. "Shall I repeat how deeply I love thee—how ardently I adore thee? Oh! my best beloved, do not thus abandon yourself to the wildness of a vain and useless despair!"
"But have I not been made the victim of a dreadful conspiracy?" said Rosamond; "was I not inveigled hither to be ruined? Oh! I will fly—I will fly—I will hasten home to my father—I will throw myself at his feet and tell him all—and he will pardon and avenge me!"
Again she endeavoured to spring from the bed; but Sir Henry Courtenay held her back—and, through sheer exhaustion, she fell weeping on his breast.
Then the task of consoling her—or rather of somewhat moderating the excess of her anguish, became more easy; and the baronet reasoned and vowed—argued and protested—and pleaded for pardon so touchingly and with so much apparent contrition, that Rosamond began to believe there was indeed some extenuation for one who loved her so passionately, and who had been led away by the frenzy of those feelings of which she was the object.