Hear me, madam!--Yes ominous! I see no end to it, have every thing to
fear from it, and nothing to hope--There is a thought--Ay, that verges
to madness!--I have a rival--! But I will forget it--at least will
try. Who can deny that it is excruciating?--But I am actuated at
present by another and a nobler motive. You know, madam, what you
found me; and I hope you are not quite unconscious of what you have
made me. You have taught me principles to which I mean to adhere, and
truths I intend to assert; have opened views to me of immense
magnitude! In your society I am secure. But habits are inveterate, and
easily revived; and were I torn from you, I myself know not the degree
of my own danger. Yes, madam, fain indeed would I forget there is such
a person as Frank Henley! Yet how? By what effort, what artifice? Say!
Teach me! What though my heart reproaches me with its own foibles, who
can prevent possibilities, mere possibilities, in a case like this,
from being absolute torments? My soul pants and aches after certainty!
The moment I ask myself what doubt there can be of Anna St. Ives, I
answer none, none! Yet the moment after, forgetting this question,
alarms, probabilities, past scenes and intolerable suppositions swarm
to assault me, without relaxation or mercy.
Clifton, you said you had a nobler motive.
I merit the reproach, madam. These effusions burst from me, are
unworthy of me, and I disclaim them. You have pardoned many of my
strays and mistakes, and I am sure will pardon this. [For the love of
fame, Fairfax, do not suffer the numerous master-strokes of this
dialogue to escape you. I cannot stay to point them out.] Yes, madam, I
have a nobler motive! Yet, enlarged as your mind is, I know not how to
prepare you calmly to listen to me, without alarm and without
prevention. Strange as it may seem, I dread to speak truth even to you!
If truth it be, speak, and fear nothing. Propose but any adequate and
worthy purpose, and there is no pain, no danger, no disgrace from which
if I know myself I would shrink.
No disgrace, madam?
Your words and looks both doubt me--Put me to the proof. Propose I say
an adequate and worthy purpose, and let your test be such as nature
shudders at; then despise me and my principles if I recoil.
The union of marriage demands reciprocal, unequivocal, and unbounded
confidence; for how can we pretend to love those whom we cannot trust?
The man who is unworthy this unbounded confidence is most unworthy to
be a husband; and it were even better he should shew his bad qualities,
by basely and dishonestly deserting her who had committed herself body
and soul to his honour, than that such qualities should discover
themselves after marriage. There is no disgrace can equal the torment
of such an alliance.