“None of these, sir, can break down the barrier caused by the measures you thought fit to take to get me into your power.”
“You take a vastly high tone with me, madam. I could almost fancy I had been so unfortunate as to lay siege to a heart already occupied by some happier rival.” He looked curiously into my face, but I summoned resolution enough to appear unmoved, not knowing to what further trial he might be about to subject me. “Can it be that the fortress had surrendered before my arrival to one of those gay young gentlemen that fluttered about Clarissa at Calcutta?”
“Sir,” I said, “all this is beside the mark. Pray believe that I must refuse to marry you were you the only man in the world.”
“And that’s final?” he cried, springing up and seeming to tower above me. “Then on your knees, madam! Unsay those words, and ask my pardon for ’em, or”—and he swore a horrid oath—“by this time to-morrow you’ll be in the hands of a man that will take no refusal from you. I saved you from the Nabob once, but not for this. Unless you’ll pleasure me, you shall pleasure him.”
“I am a weak woman, sir, and if you deliver me by force to the Nabob I can’t hope to resist. But yield to you by my own will I won’t.”
“What!” he cried, sneering, “you’d have me employ force, as a salve to your conscience? But I won’t gratify you, madam. You’ll marry me of your own free will, or go to the Killa.”
“Then Heaven’s will be done, sir.”
“What—you expect deliverance from this dilemma that I’ve set before you? What friend have you in the world that can assist you now?”
“None, sir—except God.”
“And you have never appealed to God until this moment? He has not left any prayer of yours unanswered? You anticipate seriously a miracle of deliverance after a whole year in which your God has done nothing for you? Fie, madam! the days of miracles are past—even if you believe they ever existed.”