sentences were spoken with a dignity which rebuked rather than
supplicated. Dagworthy's head bowed as he listened.

He came nearer.

'Do you think me,' he asked, under his breath, 'a mere ignorant lout,
who has to be shamed before he knows what's manly and what isn't? Do you
think because I'm a manufacturer, and the son of one, that I've no
thought or feeling above my trade? I know as well as you can tell me,
though you speak with words I couldn't command, that I'm doing a mean
and a vile thing--there; hear me say it, Emily Hood. But it's not a
cruel thing. I want to compel you to do what, in a few years, you'll be
glad of. I want you to accept love such as no other man can give you,
and with it the command of pretty well everything you can wish for. I
want to be a slave at your feet, with no other work in life than finding
out your desires and satisfying them. You're not to be tempted with
money, and I don't try to; but I value the money because it will give me
power to show my love. And mind what I say ask yourself if it isn't
true. If you hadn't been engaged already, you'd have listened to me; I
feel that power in myself; I know I should have made you care for me by
loving you as desperately as I do. I wouldn't have let you refuse
me--you hear, Emily? Emily! Emily! Emily!--it does me good to call you
by your name--I haven't done so before to-day, have I, Emily? Not a
cruel thing, because I offer you more than any man living can, more of
that for which you care most, the life a highly educated woman can
appreciate. You shall travel where you will; you shall buy books and
pictures, and all else to your heart's content; and, after all, you
shall love me. That's a bold word, but I tell you I feel the power in me
to win your love. I'm not hateful to you, even now; you can't really
despise me, for you know that whatever I do is for no mean purpose.
There is no woman living like you, and to make you my wife I am prepared
to do anything, however vile it seems. Some day you'll forgive it all,
because some day you'll love me!'

It was speaking as he had never yet done. He assumed that his end was
won, and something of the triumph of passion endued his words with a
joyous fervour. Very possibly there was truth in much that he said, for
he spoke with the intense conviction which fulfils prophecies. But the
only effect was to force Emily back upon her cold defiance.

'I am in your house, Mr. Dagworthy,' she said, 'and you can