id he, "were I"----

"Never!" she replied, interrupting him; but a sudden heaving of the
breast showed the anguish that one hopeless word cost her.

Stephen was in the chamber, still hurrying to and fro, too fully
absorbed in his own abstractions to understand or attend to what was
passing.

"And wherefore?" inquired the cavalier, with some surprise.

"Wherefore? Ask your own nature and condition; your pride of station,
which I have but lately known; your better reason, why; and see if it
were either wise or fitting that one like yourself--though of your
precise condition I am yet ignorant--should wive with the daughter of
a poor but honest tapster. Suffer this plainness; I might be your
bauble to-day, and your chain to-morrow."

"Thou dost wrong me!" said the cavalier; and he took her hand
tenderly, almost unresistingly, for a moment. "I would wear thee as my
heart's best jewel, and inlay thee in its shrine. It is but fitting
that the life thou hast preserved should be rendered unto thee."

"Nay, sir," said she, withdrawing her hand, "my pride forbids it; ay,
pride! equal, if not superior to your own. I would not be the wife of
a prince on these terms; nor on any other. 'Be not unequally yoked.'
Will not this wholesome precept hold even in a carnal and worldly
sense? I would not endure the feeling of inferiority, even from a
husband. 'Twould but be servitude the more galling, because I could
neither persuade myself into an equality, nor rid me of the chain."

"Thou dost reason wondrously, maiden. 'Tis an easy conquest, when
neither passion nor affection oppose our judgment; when the feelings
are too cold to kindle even at the spark which the Deity himself hath
lighted for our solace and our blessing in this valley of tears."

"Mine!--Oh! say not they are too cold, too slow to kindle. They are
too easily roused, too ardent, too soon bent before an earthly idol;
but"--here she laid her hand on his arm--"but the right hand must be
cut off, the right eye plucked out. I would not again be their slave,
under the tyranny and dominion of these elements of our fallen nature,
for all the pomps and vanities which they would purchase. There be
mightier obstacles than those of expediency, as thou dost well
imagine, to thy suit; but these are neither coldness nor
indifference." Here her voice faltered with emotion, and her heart
rose, rebelling against her own inflexible purpose, in that keen, that
overwhelming anguish of t