ation for a moment
getting the better of her fears: "with one so false and treacherous, so
unprincipled and ungrateful, so base and revengeful,--with such a man,
with such a villain, never! no, never!"

"I _am_ a villain indeed, Edith," said Braxley, but with exemplary
coolness; "all men are so. Good and evil are sown together in our
natures, and each has its season and its harvest. In this breast, as in
the breast of the worst and the noblest, Nature set, at birth, an angel
and a devil, either to be the governor of my actions, as either should be
best encouraged. If the devil be now at work, and have been for months,
it was because your scorn called him from his slumbers. Before that time
Edith, I was under the domination of my angel; who then called, or who
deemed me, a villain? Was I then a robber and persecutor of the orphan?
Am I _now_? Perhaps so,--but it is yourself that have made me so. For
you, I called up my evil genius to my aid; and my evil-genius aided me.
He bade me woo no longer like the turtle but strike like the falcon.
Through plots and stratagems, through storms and perils, through battle
and blood, I have pursued you, and I have conquered at last. The captive
of my sword and spear, you will spurn my love no longer; for, in truth,
you cannot. I came to the wilderness to seek an heiress for your uncle's
wealth; I have found her. But she returns to her inheritance the wife of
the seeker! In a word, my Edith,--for why should I, who am now the master
of your fate, forbear the style of a conqueror? why should I longer sue,
who have the power to command?--you are _mine_,--mine beyond the
influence of caprice or change,--mine beyond the hope of escape. This
village you will never leave but as a bride."

So spoke the bold wooer, elated by the consciousness of successful
villany, and perhaps convinced from long experience of the timorous, and
doubtless, feeble, character of the maid, that a haughty and overbearing
tone would produce an impression, however painful it might be to her,
more favourable to his hopes than the soft hypocrisy of sueing. He was
manifestly resolved to wring from her fears the consent not to be
obtained from her love. Nor had he miscalculated the power of such a
display of bold, unflinching energetic determination in awing, if not
bending, her youthful spirit. She seemed indeed, stunned, wholly
overpowered by his resolved and violent manner; and she had scarcely
strength to mutter the a