"Bernard! my mistress is dear to me; her happiness more sacred to me than my own. If I believed that you would ever play her false, if I believed that a sinister motive led you to accomplish this end, as I stand before you here, I would expose you as you are. I would lay bare to her the secrets of the past. I would warn her to recall the love which she has lavished on you, though the next hour should be my last, in consequence. Her happiness shall never be wrecked while I have the slightest power to guide it clear from danger."
With his impetuous spirit growing calm, as Minny became more excited, Wilkins looked upon her, as she confronted him, with her soul in her face, and his eyes kindled with the admiration his impulsive but generous heart could not but feel.
"Most nobly spoken, Minny!" he exclaimed, earnestly, "and now, as Heaven hears, let me speak what I feel is truth. Minny, there is a first love, a wavering, flickering, effervescing sentiment of youthful hearts, faithful and enduring in some instances, but not in mine, and this, God forgive me, I gave to you. True, I believed then I could never change; but the change came, with the exhalation of my heart's first passion, and though I never hated, I found I could no longer love you. Our marriage was illegal; I did not know it when it took place, but I learned it afterwards, when my love had chilled, and with perhaps a cruel, but a just hand, Minny, just to us both, I severed the cord which had bound us so sweetly, and our parted hearts drifted out of each other's sight, on the billows of life's ocean."
"Aye, Bernard, the one, a torn and shattered wreck, cast helpless on the desolate shores of sorrow and despair; the other, strong and uninjured, floating away to new and pleasant places, with only the shadow of a sad memory following it."
"Too true, Minny, too true! alas for the restless impulses of my misguided spirit. Alas for the trusting hopefulness of thine. But, Minny, as I stand before you now, with my whole heart open to your sight, I can most truly declare, that my love for Della is all that you would have it. She is trusting and innocent. I will never blight
the one, or betray the other. I will hold her to my strong heart as some tender flower, which needs protection from a wintry blast, and from the world's cold breath; I will shield and guard, and cherish her with my life. God help me so to do!"
"Amen, Bernard, amen!"
"Minny, are you satisfied?"
"Yes! my heart trusts you once again. Even more hopeful for its trust for another, than even for itself."