Gerald caught the book eagerly to his lips. "I swear it Matilda,—he shall die."
But scarcely had he sworn, when a creeping chill passed through his frame. His features lost all their animation, and, throwing away the book on which the impious oath had been taken, he turned away his face from Matilda, and sinking his head upon his breast, groaned and wept bitterly.
"What! already, Gerald, do you repent? Nay, tell me not that one thus infirm of purpose, can be strong of passion. You love me not, else would the wrongs of her you love arm you with the fiercest spirit of vengeance against him who has so deeply injured her. But if you repent, it is but to absolve you from the oath, and then the deed must be my own."
The American spoke in tones in which reproach, expostulation, and wounded affection, were artfully and touchingly blended, and as she concluded, she too dropped her head upon her chest and sighed.
"Nay, Matilda, you do me wrong. It is one thing to swerve from the guilty purpose to which your too seductive beauty has won my soul,—another, to mourn as man should mourn, the hour when virtue, honor, religion, all the nobler principles in which my youth has been nurtured, have proved too weak to stem the tide of guilty passion. You say I love you not!" and he laughed bitterly. "What greater proof would you require than the oath I have just taken?"
"Its fulfilment," said Matilda impressively.
"It shall be fulfilled," he returned quickly; "but at least deny me not the privilege of cursing the hour when crime of so atrocious a dye could be made so familiar to my soul."
"Crime is a word too indiscriminately bestowed," said Matilda, after a momentary pause. "What the weak in mind class with crime, the strong term virtue."
"Virtue! what, to spill the blood of a man who has never injured me; to become a hired assassin, the price of whose guilt is the hand of her who instigates to the deed? If this be virtue, I am indeed virtuous."
"Never injured you!" returned the American, while she bent her dark eyes reproachfully upon those of the unhappy Gerald. "Has he not injured me?—injured beyond all power of reparation, her who is to be the partner of your life?"