You will forfeit every source of worldly content
and cast off every spring of social success. Society for you
will become a great confederation to deprive you of self-
complacency. And rightly. Will you not be a traitor to the
cause? No, no, kind friend, for such I'll call you. Your
opinion of me, too good and great as I feel it, touches me
deeply. I am not used to such passages in life; I have read
of such. Pardon me, feel for me, if I receive them with some
disorder. They sound to me for the first time--and for the
last. Perhaps they ought never to have reached my ear. No
matter now--I have a life of penitence before me, and I trust
I shall be pardoned." And she wept.
"You have indeed punished me for the fatal accident of birth,
if it deprives me of you."
"Not so," she added weeping; "I shall never be the bride of
earth; and but for one whose claims though earthly are to me
irresistible, I should have ere this forgotten my hereditary
sorrows in the cloister."
All this time Egremont had retained her hand, which she had
not attempted to withdraw. He had bent his head over it as
she spoke--it was touched with his tears. For some moments
there was silence; then looking up and in a smothered voice
Egremont made one more effort to induce Sybil to consider his
suit.
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