, clasping my hands above my eyes, I wept
aloud, adding, a moment later, as I indignantly wiped my tears: "Yes, if
the worst betide, there will only be one more martyr; and, what is
martyrdom, that any need shrink from it? The world is full of it!"

"Nothing, if you are used to it," he said, carelessly, "as the old woman
remarked of the eels she was skinning alive; I suppose you know all
about it by this time. But come, you are rational again, now, and I
don't wish to be hard on you, Miriam; I don't, upon my soul!"

"Your soul!" I murmured---"your soul!" I reiterated louder; and I smiled
at the idea that suggested itself--"have reptiles souls?"

"The memory of your father alone, my old, confiding friend, one of the
most perfect of men, as I always thought him, would incline me kindly to
his daughter, even if no other tie existed between us," he said calmly,
unmindful of my sarcasm. "But other ties do exist, mistaken girl! The
world looks upon us as one family--since the marriage of Claude and
Evelyn, that uncongenial union which, but for your caprice, would never
have taken place, and which is at the root of all our misfortunes, all
our fatal necessities."

"Necessities!" I muttered, between my clinched teeth, drumming with my
fingers impatiently on the table before me, and smiling scornfully a
moment later.

"You seem in a mood for iteration, to-day, Miss Monfort."

"I make my running commentaries in that way, Mr. Bainrothe. But a truce
to recrimination and reminiscence both. Let us adhere strictly to the
letter and verse of our affairs. These papers form the subject of your
visit, I believe. Know, at once, that the first I will sign, on certain
conditions, bitter and humiliating as I feel it to be obliged to do
this; but, that I will ever consent to yield the guardianship of my
sister wholly to Evelyn Erie and her husband, or divest myself of my
house and furniture, or my wild lands in Georgia, to you, here first
named to me, in consideration of expenses already incurred and to be
incurred for Mabel's education, and my own safe-keeping, during a long
attack of lunacy; or that I will, to crown the whole iniquitous
requisition, consent to give my hand in marriage to that scoundrel--Luke
Gregory!--are visions as vain as those of the child who tried to grasp a
comet or the moon--or, to descend in comparison, to catch a bird by
putting salt on its tail! There, you have my ultimatum; now go and make
the best of it!"