"Name it! if it is possible, it is done!"
"That you from this moment give up all idea of a meeting with Frank Beverly, which I know has only thus long been delayed by your wounds and illness." He dropped her hand and writhed upon his seat in agony—the cold perspiration bursting from his pale forehead, as he covered it with his hands. But presently standing up he exclaimed, "Great God! and can you ask this of me, Virginia? Is my honour of so little value to you, that you can ask me to betray it? You heard the insult! You saw the dagger aimed in the dark! Ay, and saw it strike upon a bare and wounded nerve! Shall I not resist? Is an assassin to thrust the point of his steel into the very apple of my eye, and meet with no resistance? Instinct itself would strike back the cowardly blow. Another might forego the measure of his revenge for an ordinary insult, but placed as I am, an elevated mark for impertinence and malignity to shoot at, with nothing but my single arm to defend me; no line of noble and heroic ancestors to support my pretensions, and my rank in the community; no living relations to give the lie to his calumnies! Standing alone amidst a host of powerful enemies, shall I be stricken down by a cowardly maligner, and never turn to strike one blow for my good name, my mother's honour, my father's memory, and my own standing in society? No, no, Virginia; you cannot, you will not, require me to promise this. One evidence I must and will give to the calumniator, that I come of no churl's blood."
"But, Nathaniel, did you not resent and thus return his injury upon the spot?"
"Ay, truly, I did hurl defiance in the craven's teeth, but that only throws the demand for satisfaction upon his shoulders, so that when it is made, I may at once atone for his, and take ample reparation for my own deep wrongs."
"Promise me, then, that you will but act with Frank henceforth on the defensive? Remember he is my kinsman."
"I do promise; and now promise me in your turn never to marry this kinsman, unless I give my consent, or you should be absolved from your obligation by my death, or some other irremediable barrier."
"I promise, Nathaniel."
Scarcely had the words issued from her lips, when the clanking of stirrups and clattering of a horse's hoofs at full speed, were heard outside the garden wall.
Into what a state of consternation and dismay the family was thrown by the appearance of the bloody and panting charger at his stable door without his master, the reader may already have imagined.