'I know no right,' said Laura, recovering herself, 'that you have to question me—nor meanly thus to steal—'
'No evasions!' interrupted Hargrave, in a voice of thunder. 'I have rights—rights which I will maintain while I have being. Now tell me, if you dare, that you have transferred them to that abhorred—'
He stopped,—his utterance choked by the frenzy into which he had worked himself. 'What has transported you to this fury, Colonel Hargrave?' said Laura, calmly. 'Surely you must be sensible, that whatever claims I might once have allowed you, have long since been made void by your own conduct. I will not talk to you of principle, though that were of itself sufficient to sever us forever; but ask yourself what right you can retain over the woman whom you have insulted, and forsaken, and oppressed, and outraged?'
'Spare your taunts, Laura. They will only embitter the hour of retribution. And may hell be my portion, if I be not richly repaid for all the scorn you have heaped upon me. I will be revenged, proud woman. You shall be at my mercy, where no cool canting villain can wrest you from me!'
His threats, and the frightful violence with which they were uttered, filled Laura with mingled dread and pity. 'Command yourself, I beseech you, Colonel Hargrave,' said she. 'If you resent the pain which, believe me, I have most unwillingly occasioned, you are amply revenged. You have already caused me sufferings which mock description.'
'Yes, yes. I know it,' cried Hargrave in a milder voice. 'You were not then so hard. You could feel when that vile wanton first seduced me from you. Then think what I now endure, when this cold-blooded—but may I perish if I do not snatch his prize from him. And think not of resistance, Laura; for, by all that I have suffered, resistance shall be vain.'
'Why do you talk so dreadfully to me?' said Laura, making a trembling effort to release her arm, which he still firmly grasped. 'Why, why will you not cease to persecute me? I have never injured you. I have forgiven, pitied, prayed for you. How have I deserved this worse than savage cruelty?'
'Laura,' said Hargrave, moved by the pleadings of a voice which would have touched a murderer's heart, 'you have still a choice. Promise to be mine. Permit me only, by slow degrees, to regain what I have lost. Say that months—that years hence you will consent, and you are safe.'
'Impossible!' said Laura. 'I cannot bind myself. Nor could you trust a promise extorted by fear. Yet be but half what I once thought you, and I will esteem—'
'Esteem!' interrupted Hargrave, with a ghastly smile. 'Yes! And shrink from me, as you do now, while you hang on that detested wretch till even his frozen heart warm to passion. No!' continued he, with an awful adjuration, 'though the deed bring me to the scaffold, you shall be mine. You shall be my wife, too, Laura,—but not till you have besought me—sued at my feet for the title you have so often despised. I will be master of your fate, of that reputation, that virtue which you worship—and your minion shall know it, that he may writhe under jealousy and disappointment.'