Elizabeth was shocked and surprised; what could he mean? "The future," she replied, "will bring my dear father's liberation; how then can that be so bad?"
He looked earnestly and inquiringly on her. "Yes," she continued, "my sorrows, heavy as they are, have not that additional pang; I have no doubt of the ultimate justice that will be rendered my father. We have much to endure in the interim, much that undermines the fortitude and visits the heart with sickening throes; there is no help but patience; let us have patience, and this adversity will pass away; the prison and the trial will be over, and freedom and security again be ours."
"I see how it is," replied Neville; "we each live in a world of our own, and it is wicked in me to give you a glimpse of the scene as it is presented to me."
"Yet speak; explain!" said Elizabeth; "you have frightened me so much that any explanation must be better than the thoughts which your words, your manner, suggest."
"Nay," said Neville, "do not let my follies infect you. Your views, your hopes, are doubtless founded on reason. It is, if you will forgive the allusion that may seem too light for so sad a subject, but the old story of the silver and brazen shield. I see the dark, the fearful side of things; I live among your enemies—that is, the enemies of Mr. Falkner. I hear of nothing but his guilt, and the expiation prepared for it. I am maddened by all I hear.
"I have implored my father not to pursue his vengeance. Convinced as I am of the truth of Mr. Falkner's narration, the idea that one so gifted should be made over to the fate that awaits him is abhorrent; and when I think that you are involved in such a scene of wrong and horror, my blood freezes in my veins. I have implored my father, I have quarrelled with him, I have made Sophia advocate the cause of justice against malice; all in vain. Could you see the old man—my father I mean; pardon my irreverence—how he revels in the demoniacal hope of revenge, and with what hideous delight he gloats upon the detail of ignominy to be inflicted on one so much his superior in every noble quality, you would feel the loathing I do. He heaps sarcasm and contempt on my feeble spirit, as he names my pardon of my mother's destroyer, my esteem for him, and my sympathy for you; but that does not touch me. It is the knowledge that he will succeed, and you be lost and miserable for ever, that drives me to desperation.
"I fancied that these thoughts must pursue you even more painfully than they do me. I saw you writhing beneath the tortures of despair, wasting away under the influence of intense misery. You haunted my dreams, accompanied by every image of horror—sometimes you were bleeding, ghastly, dying—sometimes you took my poor mother's form, as Falkner describes it, snatched cold and pale from the waves—other visions flitted by, still more frightful. Despairing of moving my father, abhorring the society of every human being, I have been living for the last month at Dromore. A few days ago my father arrived there. I wondered till I heard the cause. The time for expecting Osborne had arrived. As vultures have instinct for carrion, so he swooped down at the far off scent of evil fortune; he had an emissary at Liverpool, on the watch to hear of this man's arrival. Disgusted at this foul appetite for evil, I left him. I came here—only to see you, to gaze on you afar, was to purify the world of the 'blasts from hell' which the bad passions I have so long contemplated spread round me. My father learned whither I had gone; I had a letter from him this morning—you may guess at its contents."
"He triumphs in Osborne's refusal to appear," said Elizabeth, who was much moved by the picture of hatred and malice Neville had presented to her; and trembled from head to foot as she listened, from the violent emotions his account excited, and the vehemence of his manner as he spoke.
"He does indeed triumph," replied Neville; "and you—you and Mr. Falkner, do you not despair?"
"If you could see my dear father," said Elizabeth, her courage returning at the thought, "you would see how innocence and a noble mind can sustain; at the worst, he does not despair. He bears the present with fortitude, he looks to the future with resignation. His soul is firm, his spirit inflexible."