Lucy had been standing while he spoke; but she now staggered over to a seat, on which she fell rather than sat. Her large, lucid eyes lost their lustre; her frame quivered; her face became of an ashy paleness; but still those eyes were bent upon her father.
“Papa,” she said, at length, in a low voice that breathed of horror, “do not kill me.”
“Kill you, foolish girl! Now really, Lucy, this is extremely ridiculous and vexatious too. Is not my daughter a woman of honor?”
“Papa,” she said, solemnly, going down upon her two knees, and joining her lovely and snowy hands together, in an attitude of the most earnest and heart-rending supplication; “papa, hear me. You have said that I saved your life; be now as generous as I was—save mine.”
“Lucy,” he replied, “this looks like want of principle. You would violate your promise. I should not wish Dunroe to hear this, or to know it. He might begin to reason upon it, and to say that the woman who could deliberately break a solemn promise might not hesitate at the marriage vow. I do not apply this reasoning to you, but he or others might. Of course, I expect that, as a woman of honor, you will keep your word with me, and marry Dunroe on Monday. You will have no trouble—everything shall be managed by them; a brilliant trousseau can be provided as well afterwards as before.”
Lucy rose up; and as she did, the blood, which seemed to have previously gathered, to her heart, now returned to her cheek, and began to mantle upon it, whilst her figure, before submissive and imploring, dilated to its full size.
“Father,” said she, “since you will not hear the voice of supplication, hear that of reason and truth. Do not entertain a doubt, no, not for a moment, that if I am urged—driven—to this marriage, hateful and utterly detestable to me as it is, I shall hesitate to marry this man. I say this, however, because I tell you that I am about to appeal to your interest in my true happiness for the last time. Is it, then, kind; is it fatherly in you, sir, to exact from me the fulfilment of a promise given under circumstances that ought to touch your heart into a generous perception of the sacrifice which in giving it I made for your sake alone? You were ill, and laboring under the apprehension of sudden death, principally, you said, in consequence of my refusal to become the wife of that man. I saw this; and although the effort was infinitely worse than death to me, I did not hesitate one moment in yielding up what is at any time dearer to me than life—my happiness—that you might be spared. Alas, my dear father, if you knew how painful it is to me to be forced to plead all this in my own defence, you would, you must, pity me. A generous heart, almost under any circumstances, scorns to plead its own acts, especially when they are on the side of virtue. But I, alas, am forced to it; am forced to do that which I would otherwise scorn and blush to do.”
“Lucy,” replied her father, who felt in his ambitious and tyrannical soul the full force, not only of what she said, but of the fraud he had practised on her, but which she never suspected: “Lucy, my child, you will drive me mad. Perhaps I am wrong; but at the same time my heart is so completely fixed upon this marriage, that if it be not brought about I feel I shall go insane. The value of life would be lost to me, and most probably I shall die the dishonorable death of a suicide.”
“And have you no fear for me, my father—no apprehension that I may escape from this my wretched destiny to the peace of the grave? But you need not. Thank God, I trust and feel that my regard for His precepts, and my perceptions of His providence, are too clear and too firm ever to suffer me to fly like a coward from the post in life which He has assigned me. But why, dear father, should you make me the miserable victim of your ambition?—I am not ambitious.”
“I know you are not: I never could get an honorable ambition instilled into you.”