“The prize is not yet won,” replied the other, with a smile that seemed intended to express his contempt of the maiden’s invectives, and his ability to forgive them:  “I am indeed Richard Braxley,—­the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,—­a rough and self-willed one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend.  Where will she look for a better?  Anger has not alienated, contempt has not estranged me:  injury and injustice still find me the same.  I am still Edith Forrester’s friend; and such, in the sturdiness of my affection, I will remain, whether my fair mistress will or no.  But you are feeble and agitated:  sit down and listen to me.  I have that to say which will convince my thoughtless fair the day of disdain is now over.”

All these expressions, though uttered with seeming blandness, were yet accompanied by an air of decision and even command, as if the speaker were conscious the maiden was fully in his power, and not unwilling she should know it.  But his attempt to make her resume her seat upon the pile of skins from which she had so wildly started at his entrance, was resisted by Edith; who, gathering courage from desperation, and shaking his hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces of a serpent, replied with even energy,—­“I will not sit down,—­I will not listen to you.  Approach me not—­touch me not.  You are a villain and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence.  Away from me, or—­”

“Or,” interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and vindictive spirit, “you will cry for assistance!  From whom do you expect it?  From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets than to weep for your sorrows?  Know, fair Edith, that you are now in their hands;—­that there is not one of them, who would not rather see those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn—­Look aloft:  there are ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above you!—­Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none who can protect you, save me.  Ay, my beauteous Edith,” he added, as the captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, “it is even so; and you must know it.  It is needful you should know what you have to expect, if you reject my protection.  But that you will not reject; in faith, you cannot! The time has come, as I told you it would, when your disdainful scruples—­I speak plainly, fair Edith!—­are to be at an end.  I swore to you—­and it was when your scorn and unbelief were at the highest—­that you should yet smile upon the man you disdained, and smile upon no other.  It was a rough and uncouth threat for a lover; but my mistress would have it so.  It was a vow breathed in anger:  but it was a vow not meant to be broken.  You tremble!  I am cruel in my wooing; but this is not the moment for compliment and deception.  You are mine, Edith:  I swore it to myself—­ay, and to you.  You cannot escape.  You have driven me to extremities; but they have succeeded.  You are mine; or you are—­nothing.”