Know that you are talking to one!" Scoutbush looked at her in blank astonishment.
"Madam?
Excuse me: but my own eyes--" "You are not to trust them; I tell you fact." Scoutbush was silent.

She misunderstood his silence: but went on steadily.
"I tell you, my lord, what I expect you to keep secret: and I know that I can trust your honour." Scoutbush bowed.
"And what I should never have told you, were it not my only chance of curing you of this foolish passion.

I am an American slave!" "Curse them! Who dared make you a slave ?" cried Scoutbush, turning as red as a game-cock.
"I was born a slave.

My father was a white gentleman of good family: my mother was a quadroon; and therefore I am a slave;--a negress, a runaway slave, my lord, who, if I returned to America, should be seized, and chained, and scourged, and sold .-- Do you understand me ?" "What an infernal shame!" cried Scoutbush, to whom the whole thing appeared simply as a wrong done to Marie.
"Well, my lord ?" "Well, madam ?" "Does not this fact put the question at rest for ever ?" "No, madam! What do I know about slaves?
No one is a slave in England.
No madam; all that it does is to make me long to cut half-a-dozen fellows' throats--" and Scoutbush stamped with rage.

"No, madam, you are you: and if you become my viscountess, you take my rank, I trust, and my name is yours, and my family yours; and let me see who dare interfere!" "But public opinion, my lord ?" said Marie, half-pleased, half-terrified to find the shaft which she had fancied fatal fall harmless at her feet.
"Public opinion?
You don't know England, madam! What's the use of my being a peer, if I can't do what I like, and make public opinion go my way, and not I its?
Though I am no great prince, madam, but only a poor Irish viscount, it's hard if I can't marry whom I like--in reason, that is--and expect all the world to call on her, and treat her as she deserves.