“Yes, Mr. Murray.”

Her voice was tremulous and almost inaudible.

“I had business in Tennessee, no matter now, what, or where, and I went on that night.  After a week I returned, that afternoon when I found you reading in my sitting-room.  Still I was sceptical, and not until I opened the tomb, was I convinced that you had not betrayed the trust which you supposed I placed in you.  Then, as you stood beside me in all your noble purity and touching girlish beauty,—­as you looked up half reproachfully, half defiantly at me—­it cost me a terrible effort to master myself—­to abstain from clasping you to my heart, and telling you all that you were to me.  Oh! how I longed to take you in my arms and feed my poor famished heart with one touch of your lips!  I dared not look at you, lest I should lose my self-control.  The belief that Gordon was a successful rival sealed my lips on that occasion; and ah! the dreary wretchedness of the days of suspense that followed.  I was a starving beggar who stood before what I coveted above everything else on earth, and saw it labelled with another man’s name and beyond my reach.  The daily sight of that emerald ring on your finger maddened me; and you can form no adequate idea of the bitterness of feeling with which I noted my mother’s earnest efforts and manoeuvres to secure for Gordon Leigh—­ to sell to him—­the little hand which her own son would have given worlds to claim in the sight of God and man!  Continually I watched you when you least expected me; I strewed infidel books where I knew you must see them; I tempted you more than you dreamed of; I teased and tormented and wounded you whenever an opportunity offered; for I hoped to find some flaw in your character, some defect in your temper, some inconsistency between your professions and your practice.  I knew Leigh was not your equal, and I said bitterly, ’She is poor and unknown, and will surely marry him for his money, for his position—­as Agnes would have married me.’  But you did not! and when I knew that you had positively refused his fortune, I felt that a great dazzling light had broken suddenly upon my darkened life; and, for the first time since I parted with Murray Hammond, tears of joy filled my eyes.  I ceased to struggle against my love—­I gave myself up to it, and only asked, How can I overcome her aversion to me?  You were the only tie that linked me with my race, and for your sake I almost felt as if I could forget my hate.  But you shrank more and more from me, and my punishment overtook me when I saw how you hated Clinton Allston’s blood-smeared hands, and with what unfeigned horror you regarded his career.  When you declared so vehemently that his fingers should never touch yours—­oh! it was the fearful apprehension of losing you that made me catch your dear hands and press them to my aching heart.  I was stretched upon a rack that taught me the full import of Isaac Taylor’s grim words, ’Remorse is man’s dread prerogative!’