'Oh that I could fill thee with a love that should for ever silence the cold voice of reason!' cried Hargrave, transported by her confession; and, no longer master of himself, he would have clasped her in his arms. But Laura, to whose mind his caresses ever recalled a dark page in her story, recoiled as from pollution, the glow of ingenuous modesty giving place to the paleness of terror.
No words envenomed with the bitterest malice, could have stung Hargrave to such frenzy as the look and the shudder with which Laura drew back from his embrace. His eyes flashing fire, his pale lips quivering with passion, he reproached her with perfidy and deceit; accused her of veiling her real aversion under the mask of prudence and principle; and execrated his own folly in submitting so long to be the sport of a cold-hearted, tyrannical, obdurate woman. Laura stood for some minutes gazing on him with calm compassion. But displeased at his groundless accusations, she disdained to soothe his rage. At last, wearied of language which, for the present, expressed much more of hatred than of love, she quietly moved towards the door. 'I see you can be very calm, Madam,' said Hargrave, stopping her, 'and I can be as calm as yourself,' added he, with a smile like a moon-beam on a thunder cloud, making the gloom more fearful.
'I hope you soon will be so,' replied Laura coldly. 'I am so now,' said Hargrave, his voice half-choked with the effort to suppress his passion. 'I will but stay to take leave of your father, and then free you for ever from one so odious to you.'
'That must be as you please, Sir,' said Laura, with spirit; 'but, for the present, I must be excused from attending you.' She then retired to her own chamber, which immediately adjoined the painting-room; and with tears reflected on the faint prospects of happiness that remained for the wife of a man whose passions were so ungovernable. Even the ardour of his love, for which vanity would have found ready excuse in many a female breast, was to Laura subject of unfeigned regret, as excluding him from the dominion of better motives, and the pursuit of nobler ends.
Hargrave was no sooner left to himself than his fury began to evaporate. In a few minutes he was perfectly collected, and the first act of his returning reason was to upbraid him with his treatment of Laura. 'Is it to be wondered that she shrinks from me,' said he, the tears of self-reproach rising to his eyes, 'when I make her the sport of all my frantic passions? But she shall never again have cause to complain of me—let but her love this once excuse me, and henceforth I will treat her with gentleness like her own.'
There is no time in the life of a man so tedious, as that which passes between the resolution to repair a wrong, and the opportunity to make the reparation. Hargrave wondered whether Laura would return to conduct him to her father; feared that she would not—hoped that she would—thought he heard her footstep—listened—sighed—and tried to beguile the time by turning over her drawings.
Almost the first that met his eye, was a sketch of features well known to him. He started and turned pale. He sought for a name upon the reverse; there was none, and he again breathed more freely. 'This must be accident,' said he; 'De Courcy is far from London—yet it is very like;' and he longed more than ever for Laura's appearance. He sought refuge from his impatience in a book which lay upon the table. It was the Pleasures of Hope, and marked in many parts of the margins with a pencil. One of the passages so marked was that which begins,
'Thy pencil traces on the lover's thought
'Some cottage home, from towns and toil remote,
'Where love and lore may claim alternate hours,' &c.
And Hargrave surrendered himself to the pleasing dream that Laura had thought of him, while she approved the lines. 'Her name, written by her own snowy fingers, may be here,' said he, and he turned to the title-page, that he might press it, with a lover's folly, to his lips—The title-page was inscribed with the name of Montague De Courcy.
The glance of the basilisk was not more powerful. Motionless he gazed on the words, till all the fiends of jealousy taking possession of his soul, he furiously dashed the book upon the ground 'False, false siren,' he cried, 'is this the cause of all your coldness—your loathing?' And without any wish but to exclude her for ever from his sight, he rushed like a madman out of the house.