“Foolish girl, would you trifle with me—­would you have me spurn and hate you?  Beware!”

The outlaw well knew the yielding and sensitive material out of which his victim had been made.  His stern rebuke was well calculated to effect in her bosom that revulsion of feeling which he knew would follow any threat of a withdrawal, even of the lingering and frail fibres of that affection, few and feeble as they were, which he might have once persuaded her to believe had bound him to her.  The consequence was immediate, and her subdued tone and resigned action evinced the now entire supremacy of her natural temperament.

“Oh, forgive me, Guy, I know not what I ask or what I do.  I am so worn and weary, and my head is so heavy, that I think it were far better if I were in my grave with the cold frame whom we shall soon put there.  Heed not what I say—­I am sad and sick, and have not the spirit of reason, or a healthy will to direct me.  Do with me as you will—­I will obey you—­go anywhere, and, worst of all, behold you wed another; ay, stand by, if you desire it, and look on the ceremony, and try to forget that you once promised me that I should be yours, and yours only.”

“You speak more wisely, Ellen; and you will think more calmly upon it when the present grief of your grandmother’s death passes off.”

“Oh, that is no grief, now, Guy,” was the rather hasty reply.  “That is no grief now:  should I regret that she has escaped these tidings—­should I regret that she has ceased to feel trouble, and to see and shed tears—­should I mourn, Guy, that she who loved me to the last, in spite of my follies and vices, has ceased now to mourn over them?  Oh, no! this is no grief, now; it was grief but a little while ago, but now you have made it matter of rejoicing.”

“Think not of it,—­speak no more in this strain, Ellen, lest you anger me.”

“I will not—­chide me not—­I have no farther reproaches.  Yet, Guy, is she, the lady you are about to wed—­is she beautiful, is she young—­has she long raven tresses, as I had once, when your fingers used to play in them?” and with a sickly smile, which had in it something of an old vanity, she unbound the string which confined her own hair, and let it roll down upon her back in thick and beautiful volumes, still black, glossy and delicately soft as silk.

The outlaw was moved.  For a moment his iron muscles relaxed—­a gentler expression overspread his countenance, and he took her in his arms.  That single, half-reluctant embrace was a boon not much bestowed in the latter days of his victim, and it awakened a thousand tender recollections in her heart, and unsealed a warm spring of gushing waters.  An infantile smile was in her eyes, while the tears were flowing down her cheeks.

But, shrinking or yielding, at least to any great extent, made up very little of the character of the dark man on whom she depended; and the more than feminine weakness of the young girl who hung upon his bosom like a dying flower, received its rebuke, after a few moments of unwonted tenderness, when, coldly resuming his stern habit, he put her from his arms, and announced to her his intention of immediately taking his departure.