She started--an inquiring and tearful doubt rose into her eyes, as they settled piercingly upon his own; but the information they met with there needed no further word of assurance from his lips.

He was a stern tyrant--one, however, who did not trifle.
"I feared as much, Guy--I have had thoughts which as good as told me this long before.

The silent form before me has said to me, over and over again, you would never wed her whom you have dishonored.

Oh, fool that I was!--spite of her forebodings and my own, I thought--I still think, and oh, Guy, let me not think in vain--that there would be a time when you would take away the reproach from my name and the sin from my soul, by making me your wife, as you have so often promised." "You have indeed thought like a child, Ellen, if you suppose that, situated as I am, I could ever marry simply because I loved." "And will you not love her whom you are now about to wed ?" "Not as much as I have loved you--not half so much as I love you now--if it be that I have such a feeling at this moment in my bosom." "And wherefore then would you wed, Guy, with one whom you do not, whom you can not love?
In what have I offended--have I ever reproached or looked unkindly on you, Guy, even when you came to me, stern and full of reproaches, chafed with all things and with everybody ?" "There are motives, Ellen, governing my actions into which you must not inquire--" "What, not inquire, when on these actions depend all my hope--all my life! Now indeed you are the tyrant which my old mother said, and all people say, you are." The girl for a moment forgot her submissiveness, and her words were tremulous, less with sorrow than the somewhat strange spirit which her wrongs had impressed upon her.

But sue soon felt the sinking of the momentary inspiration, and quickly sought to remove the angry scowl which she perceived coming over the brow of her companion.
"Nay, nay--forgive me, Guy--let me not reproach--let me not accuse you.
I have not done so before: I would not do so now.