The silent form before me has said to me, over and
over again, you would never wed her whom you have dishonored. Oh, fool
that I was!--spite of her forebodings and my own, I thought--I still
think, and oh, Guy, let me not think in vain--that there would be a time
when you would take away the reproach from my name and the sin from my
soul, by making me your wife, as you have so often promised."
"You have indeed thought like a child, Ellen, if you suppose that,
situated as I am, I could ever marry simply because I loved."
"And will you not love her whom you are now about to wed?"
"Not as much as I have loved you--not half so much as I love you now--if
it be that I have such a feeling at this moment in my bosom."
"And wherefore then would you wed, Guy, with one whom you do not, whom
you can not love? In what have I offended--have I ever reproached or
looked unkindly on you, Guy, even when you came to me, stern and full of
reproaches, chafed with all things and with everybody?"
"There are motives, Ellen, governing my actions into which you must not
inquire--"
"What, not inquire, when on these actions depend all my hope--all my
life! Now indeed you are the tyrant which my old mother said, and all
people say, you are.
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