“And can you think I would allow you to be borne away a captive to ignominy and certain destruction?” cried Richard.  “No, I will shed my heart’s best blood before such a calamity shall occur.”

“Alas!” said Alizon, “I have no means of requiting your devotion.  All I can offer you in return is my love, and that, I fear, will prove fatal to you.”

“Oh! do not say so,” cried Richard.  “Why should this sad presentiment still haunt you?  I strove to chase it away just now, and hoped I had succeeded.  You are dearer to me than life.  Why, therefore, should I not risk it in your defence?  And why should your love prove fatal to me?”

“I know not,” replied Alizon, in a tone of deepest anguish, “but I feel as if my destiny were evil; and that, against my will, I shall drag those I most love on earth into the same dark gulf with myself.  I have the greatest affection for your sister Dorothy, and yet I have been the unconscious instrument of injury to her.  And you too, Richard, who are yet dearer to me, are now put in peril on my account.  I fear, too, when you know my whole history, you will think of me as a thing of evil, and shun me.”

“What mean you, Alizon?” he cried.

“Richard, I can have no secrets from you,” she replied; “and though I was forbidden to tell you what I am now about to disclose, I will not withhold it.  I was born in this house, and am the daughter of its mistress.”

“You tell me only what I guessed, Alizon,” rejoined the young man; “but I see nothing in this why I should shun you.”

Alizon hid her face for a moment in her hands; and then looking up, said wildly and hurriedly, “Would I had never known the secret of my birth; or, knowing it, had never seen what I beheld last night!”

“What did you behold?” asked Richard, greatly agitated.

“Enough to convince me, that in gaining a mother I was lost myself,” replied Alizon; “for oh! how can I survive the shock of telling you I am bound, by ties that can never be dissevered, to one abandoned alike of God and man—­who has devoted herself to the Fiend!  Pity me, Richard—­pity me, and shun me!”

There was a moment’s dreadful pause, which the young man was unable to break.

“Was I not right in saying my love would be fatal to you?” continued Alizon.  “Fly from me while you can, Richard.  Fly from this house, or you are lost for ever!”

“Never, never!  I will not stir without you,” cried Richard.  “Come with me, and escape all the dangers by which you are menaced, and leave your sinning parent to the doom she so richly merits.”

“No, no; sinful though she be, she is still my mother.  I cannot leave her,” cried Alizon.

“If you stay, I stay, be the consequences what they may,” replied the young man; “but you have rendered my arm powerless by what you have told me.  How can I defend one whom I know to be guilty?”

“Therefore I urge you to fly,” she rejoined.