"
The gloomy despondence of her spirit was uppermost; and she went on, in
a series of bitter musings, denouncing herself as an outcast, a
worthless something, and, in the language of the sacred text, calling on
the rocks and mountains to cover her. The outlaw, who had none of those
fine feelings which permitted of even momentary sympathy with that
desolation of heart, the sublime agonies of which are so well calculated
to enlist and awaken it, cut short the strain of sorrow and complaint by
a fierce exclamation, which seemed to stun every sense of her spirit.
"Will you never have done?" he demanded. "Am I for ever to listen to
this weakness--this unavailing reproach of yourself and everything
around you? Do I not know that all your complaints and reproaches,
though you address them in so many words to yourself, are intended only
for my use and ear? Can I not see through the poor hypocrisy of such a
lamentation? Know I not that when you curse and deplore the sin you only
withhold the malediction from him who tempted and partook of it, in the
hope that his own spirit will apply it all to himself? Away, girl; I
thought you had a nobler spirit--I thought you felt the love that I now
find existed only in expression.
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