“Owen is naturally fonder of you by a great deal,” interrupted she; “I’ll answer for that.”
“What! when he has just been detected in conspiring against my life?”
“That’s what I’ll never believe,” cried Ellinor, vehemently: “that he might be drawn in, may be, when out of his rason—he was always a wild boy—to be a united-man, and to hope to get you for his captain, might be the case, and bad enough that; but, jewel, you’ll find he did never conspire against you: I’d lay down my life upon that.”
She threw herself again at my feet, and clung to my knees.
“As you hope for mercy yourself in this world, or the world to come, show some now, and do not be so hard-hearted as to be the death of both mother and son.”
Her supplicating looks and gestures, her words, her tears, moved me so much, that I was on the point of yielding; but recollecting what was due to justice and to my own character, with an effort of what I thought virtuous resolution, I repeated, “It is impossible: my good Ellinor, urge me no farther: ask any thing else, and it shall be granted, but this is impossible.”
As I spoke, I endeavoured to raise her from the ground; but with the sudden force of angry despair, she resisted.
“No, you shall not raise me,” cried she. “Here let me lie, and break my heart with your cruelty! ‘Tis a judgment upon me—it’s a judgment, and it’s fit I should feel it as I do. But you shall feel too, in spite of your hard heart. Yes, your heart is harder than the marble: you want the natural touch, you do; for your mother has knelt at your feet, and you have denied her prayer.”
“My mother!”
“And what was her prayer?—to save the life of your brother.”