The commanding and awful manner in which he spoke this sentence, made them both turn to him in amazement, and as it were, petrified with the sensation his words had caused.
He left them for a moment, and going to a small bookcase in one corner of the room, took out of it a book, and returning with it in his hand, said,
“Lord Elmwood, do you love this woman?”
“More than my life.” He replied, with the most heartfelt accents.
He then turned to Miss Milner—“Can you say the same by him?”
She spread her hands over her eyes, and exclaimed, “Oh, Heavens!”
“I believe you can say so,” returned Sandford; “and in the name of God, and your own happiness, since this is the state of you both, let me put it out of your power to part.”
Lord Elmwood gazed at him with wonder! and yet, as if enraptured by the sudden change this conduct gave to his prospects.
She, sighed with a kind of trembling ecstasy; while Sandford, with all the dignity of his official character, delivered these words——
“My Lord, while I thought my counsel might save you from the worst of misfortunes, conjugal strife, I importuned you hourly, and set forth your danger in the light it appeared to me. But though old, and a priest, I can submit to think I have been in an error; and I now firmly believe, it is for the welfare of you both, to become man and wife. My Lord, take this woman’s marriage vows—you can ask no fairer promises of her reform—she can give you none half so sacred, half so binding; and I see by her looks that she will mean to keep them. And my dear,” continued he, addressing himself to her, “act but under the dominion of those vows, to a husband of sense and virtue, like him, and you will be all that I, himself, or even Heaven can desire. Now, then, Lord Elmwood, this moment give her up for ever, or this moment constrain her by such ties from offending you, as she shall not dare to violate.”