“And that was the reply he gave you, miss?” observed Alley; “in truth, it was more like the answer of a sheriff’s bailiff to some poor woman who had her cattle distrained for rent, and wanted to get time to pay it.”

“Alice,” she exclaimed, “I hope in God I may retain my senses, or, rather, let them depart from me, for then I shall not be conscious of what I do.  Matters are far worse than I had even imagined—­desperate—­full of horror.  This man is a fool; his intellect is beneath the very exigencies of hypocrisy, which he would put on if he could.  His infamy, his profligacy, can proceed even from no perverted energy of character, and must therefore be associated with contempt.  There is a lively fatuity about him that is uniformly a symptom of imbecility.  Among women, at least, it is so, and I have no doubt but it is the same with men.  Alice, I know what my fate will be.  It is true, you may see me married to him; but you will see me drop dead at the altar, or worse than that may happen.  I shall marry him; but to live his wife!—­oh! to live the wife of that man! the thing would be impossible; death in any shape a thousand times sooner!  Think, Alice, how you should feel if your husband were despised and detested by the world; think of that, Alice.  Still, there might be consolation even there, for the world might be wrong; but think, Alice, if he deserved that contempt and detestation—­think of it; and that you yourself knew he was entitled, to nothing else but that and infamy at its hands!  Oh, no!—­not one spark of honor—­not one trace of feeling—­of generosity—­of delicacy—­of truth—­not one moral point to redeem him from contempt.  He may be a lord, Alice, but he is not a gentleman.  Hardened, vicious, and stupid, I can see he is, and altogether incapable of comprehending what is due to the feelings of a lady, of a woman, which he I outrages without even the consciousness of the offence.  But, Alice, oh Alice! when I think—­when I compare him with—­and may Heaven forgive me for the comparison!—­when I compare him with the noble, the generous, the delicate, the true-hearted, and intellectual gentleman who has won and retains, and ever will retain, my affections, I am sick almost to death at the contrast.  Satan, Alice, is a being whom we detest and fear, but cannot despise.  This mean profligate, however, is all vice, and low vice; for even vice sometimes has its dignity.  If you could conceive Michael the Archangel resplendent with truth, brightness, and the glory of his divine nature, and compare him with the meanest, basest, and at the same time wickedest spirit that ever crawled in the depths of perdition, then indeed you might form an opinion as to the relative character of this Dunroe and my noble lover.  And yet I cannot weep, Alice; I cannot weep, for I feel that my brain is burning, and my heart scorched.  And now, for my only melancholy consolation!”

She then pulled from her bosom the portrait of her mother, by the contemplation of which she felt the tumult of her heart gradually subside; but, after having gazed at it for some time, she returned it to its place next her heart; the consolation it had transiently afforded her passed away, and the black and deadly gloom which had already withered her so much came back once more.