anity you had
excited, I have for years undergone a penance, from which a thousand
would have shrunk."

"A thousand, Zarah!" answered Christian; "ay, a hundred thousand, and a
million to boot; the creature is not on earth, being mere mortal woman,
that would have undergone the thirtieth part of thy self-denial."

"I believe it," said Zarah, drawing up her slight but elegant figure;
"I believe it--I have gone through a trial that few indeed could have
sustained. I have renounced the dear intercourse of my kind; compelled
my tongue only to utter, like that of a spy, the knowledge which my
ear had only collected as a base eavesdropper. This I have done for
years--for years--and all for the sake of your private applause--and
the hope of vengeance on a woman, who, if she did ill in murdering my
father, has been bitterly repaid by nourishing a serpent in her bosom,
that had the tooth, but not the deafened ear, of the adder."

"Well--well--well," reiterated Christian; "and had you not your
reward in my approbation--in the consequences of your own unequalled
dexterity--by which, superior to anything of thy sex that history has
ever known, you endured what woman never before endured, insolence
without notice, admiration without answer, and sarcasm without reply?"

"Not without reply!" said Zarah fiercely. "Gave not Nature to my
feelings a course of expression more impressive than words? and did not
those tremble at my shrieks, who would have little minded my entreaties
or my complaints? And my proud lady, who sauced her charities with the
taunts she thought I heard not--she was justly paid by the passing her
dearest and most secret concerns into the hands of her mortal enemy;
and the vain Earl--yet he was a thing as insignificant as the plume that
nodded in his cap;--and the maidens and ladies who taunted me--I had, or
can easily have, my revenge upon them. But there is _one_," she added,
looking upward, "who never taunted me; one whose generous feelings could
treat the poor dumb girl even as his sister; who never spoke word of her
but was to excuse or defend--and you tell me I must not love him, and
that it is madness to love him!--I _will_ be mad then, for I will love
till the latest breath of my life!"

"Think but an instant, silly girl--silly but in one respect, since
in all others thou mayest brave the world of women. Think what I have
proposed to thee, for the loss of this hopeless affection, a career so
brilliant!--T