“Never! never!  If you could offer me the whole world, or take away from me all that the world can give, it would make no difference to me.  I cannot tell what power you hold over me, whether of life and death, or of wealth and poverty; but after talking to me of love, I should not have thought you would have wronged me by suggesting any meaner motive.  It is only because we have been on friendly terms so long that I have listened to you as I have done.  You have said more than enough, and I beg you will allow me to put an end to this interview.”

She rose to leave the room.  But Murray Bradshaw had gone too far to control himself,—­he listened only to the rage which blinded him.

“Not yet!” he said.  “Stay one moment, and you shall know what your pride and self-will have cost you!”

Myrtle stood, arrested, whether by fear, or curiosity, or the passive subjection of her muscles to his imperious will, it would be hard to say.

Murray Bradshaw took out the spotted paper from his breast-pocket, and held it up before her.  “Look here!” he exclaimed.  “This would have made you rich,—­it would have crowned you a queen in society,—­it would have given you all, and more than all, that you ever dreamed of luxury, of splendor, of enjoyment; and I, who won it for you, would have taught you how to make life yield every bliss it had in store to your wishes.  You reject my offer unconditionally?”

Myrtle expressed her negative only by a slight contemptuous movement.

Murray Bradshaw walked deliberately to the fireplace, and laid the spotted paper upon the burning coals.  It writhed and curled, blackened, flamed, and in a moment was a cinder dropping into ashes.  He folded his arms, and stood looking at the wreck of Myrtle’s future, the work of his cruel hand.  Strangely enough, Myrtle herself was fascinated, as it were, by the apparent solemnity of this mysterious sacrifice.  She had kept her eyes steadily on him all the time, and was still gazing at the altar on which her happiness had been in some way offered up, when the door was opened by Kitty Fagan, and Master Byles Gridley was ushered into the parlor.

“Too late, old man!  “Murray Bradshaw exclaimed, in a hoarse and savage voice, as he passed out of the room, and strode through the entry and down the avenue.  It was the last time the old gate of The Poplars was to open or close for him.  The same day he left the village; and the next time his name was mentioned it was as an officer in one of the regiments just raised and about marching to the seat of war.

CHAPTER XXXV.

The spotted paper.

What Master Gridley may have said to Myrtle Hazard that served to calm her after this exciting scene cannot now be recalled.  That Murray Bradshaw thought he was inflicting a deadly injury on her was plain enough.  That Master Gridley did succeed in convincing her that no great harm had probably been done her is equally certain.