om
wretchedness, from ruin and from death. "I will keep her with me till
I die," he said.

"But not as your wife?"

"She shall have all attention from me,--everything that a woman's heart
can desire. You two shall be never separated."

"But not as your wife?"

"I will live where she and you may please. She shall want nothing that
my wife would possess."

"But not as your wife?"

"Not as Countess of Scroope."

"You would have her as your mistress, then?" As she asked this question
the tone of her voice was altogether altered, and the threatening
lion-look had returned to her eyes. They were now near the seat,
confronted to each other; and the fury of her bosom, which for a while
had been dominated by the tenderness of the love for her daughter, was
again raging within her. Was it possible that he should be able to treat
them thus,--that he should break his word and go from them scathless,
happy, joyous, with all the delights of the world before him, leaving
them crushed into dust beneath his feet. She had been called upon from
her youth upwards to bear injustice,--but of all injustice surely this
would be the worst. "As your mistress," she repeated,--"and I her
mother, am to stand by and see it, and know that my girl is dishonoured!
Would your mother have borne that for your sister? How would it be if
your sister were as that girl is now?"

"I have no sister."

"And therefore you are thus hard-hearted. She shall never be your
harlot;--never. I would myself sooner take from her the life I gave her.
You have destroyed her, but she shall never be a thing so low as that."

"I will marry her,--in a foreign land."

"And why not here? She is as good as you. Why should she not bear the
name you are so proud of dinning into our ears? Why should she not be a
Countess? Has she ever disgraced herself? If she is disgraced in your
eyes you must be a Devil."

"It is not that," he said hoarsely.

"What is it? What has she done that she should be thus punished? Tell
me, man, that she shall be your lawful wife." As she said this she
caught him roughly by the collar of his coat and shook him with her arm.

"It cannot be so," said the Earl Of Scroope.

"It cannot be so! But I say it shall,--or,--or--! What are you, that
she should be in your hands like this? Say that she shall be your wife,
or you shall never live to speak to another woman." The peril of his
position on the top of the cliff had not occurred to him;--nor