As he seized her, he muttered, and still with an accent of the most earnest respect,--"Fear me not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy." His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of music, completed the terrors of the captive, who trembled in his hand like a quail in the clutches of a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful to sustain as to oppose, have fallen to the floor.

Her lips quivered, but they gave forth no sound; and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness and intensity of glare that showed the fascination, the temporary self-abandonment of her spirit.
"Fear me not, Edith Forrester," he repeated, with a voice even more soothing than before: "You know me;--I am no savage;--I will do you no harm." "Yes,--yes,--yes," muttered Edith at last, but in the tones of an automaton, they were, at first, so broken and inarticulate, though they gathered force and vehemence as she spoke--"I know you,--yes, yes, I do know you, and know you well.

You are Richard Braxley,--the robber, and now the persecutor of the orphan; and this hand that holds me is red with the blood of my cousin.

Oh, villain! villain! are you not yet content ?" "The prize is not yet won," replied the other, with a smile that seemed intended to express his contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his ability to forgive them: "I am indeed Richard Braxley,--the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,--a rough and self-willed one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend.

Where will she look for a better?
Anger has not alienated, contempt has not estranged me: injury and injustice still find me the same.