nda, starting.

"It will be a thousand years till then;" interposed Montigny; "and
yet it will be the glad millenium, since you shall reign amidst my
meditations, and towards you all my thoughts be worshipping saints.
This dumb devotion will be bliss, but to have sealed you mine by
the great sacrament of marriage will be glory, such as the saved
soul experiences when, in Heaven sitting, it feels itself secure,
and proof against the possibility of loss. Accord me your consent.
Why do you ponder? wherefore should you hesitate? Amanda, be
immediately mine. What are your thoughts? What are you that transports
me with impatience out of myself, to mingle with your being, and
become one with yourself in history and fate? Our fate commands;
let us obey it, since, what is fate's behest, but Heaven's directing
voice; what is our destiny, but the deed which we perceive may not
be left undone."

"Rash man, forbear;" pronounced Amanda, her face darkening with
displeasure; "you counsel me to evil. Though I would esteem you as
I would some annunciating angel, beyond impeachment of veracity,
and bent on a generous errand, you seem as a fallen spirit now;
tempting me, not enlightening. No, Montigny, no. Shall I deceive
my guardian so kind, shall I defraud your house, your father, you?
I, who have no fortune, nor--as is your lot--upon my name, neither
the rime and hoar of silver, new renown, nor golden rust of brown
antiquity,--the dust of ages in heroic deeds, lying on your
escutcheon, dyeing it as the dust that dapples the bright insect's
wings;--shall I, I say, come and lie like to a bar sinister across
it? for what else should I be considered by your indignant friends,
except, indeed, a shadow on your brightness, a shame across your
honour?" and she hung her head in despairing sadness, whilst Montigny
thus replied:

"Oh, shame on me, to hear you so self-slandered! Friends! mistaken
friends. And what although my father and the world esteemed you my
inferior; what were their estimation unto me; and, compared with
you, what is the value of heraldic honours and traditionary glory
heaped upon the dead, which is, in truth, too often only as the
phosphorescent glimmer that hangs upon decay: what are these gauds
to me, who count you to be far above the worth of monumental effigy,
or marble mask, my living love; whom I will set,--not in the tomb
of cold, pale porphyry, nor in a sable, slabbed sarcophagus, but
breathing, and enshrined in