gallant. I am but a man unhappily in earnest--a man who placed in those
hands his life of life--who said to you, while yet in his prime, 'There
is my future, take it, till it vanish out of earth!" You have made that
life substanceless as a ghost--that future barren as the grave. And when
you dare force yourself again upon my way, and would dictate laws to my
very hearth--if I speak as a man what plain men must feel--'Oh! Mr.
Darrell,' says your injured ladyship, 'how can you have the heart?'
Woman! were you not false as the falsest? Falsehood has no dignity to
awe rebuke--falsehood no privilege of sex."

"Darrell--Darrell--Darrell--spare me, spare me! I have been so punished
--I am so miserable!"

"You!--punished!--What! you sold yourself to youth, and sleek looks, and
grand titles, and the flattery of a world; and your rose-leaves were
crumpled in the gorgeous marriage-bed. Adequate punishment!--a crumpled
rose-leaf! True, the man was a--but why should I speak ill of him? It
was he who was punished, if, accepting his rank, you recognised in
himself a nothingness that you could neither love nor honour. False and
ungrateful alike to the man you chose--to the man you forsook! And now
you have buried one, and you have schemed to degrade the other."

"Degrade!--Oh! it is that charge which has stung me to the quick. All
the others I deserve. But that charge! Listen--you shall listen."

"I stand here resigned to do so. Say all you will now, for it is the
last time on earth I lend my ears to your voice."

"Be it so--the last time." She paused to recover speech, collect
thoughts, gain strength; and strange though it may seem to those who have