Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/185

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ETHEL CHURCHILL.
183

to be a slave, a beggar, for your sake. All that I ever read of my sex's devotion seems possible—nay, natural, when I think of what I feel for you. I should hold my life as nothing could it purchase your happiness."

"And yet," interrupted Sir George, "you can calmly, coldly condemn me to the most insupportable misery."

"I am very wretched," muttered she, rather to herself than to him.

"Rather say capricious and inconstant," replied her companion.

"Alas!" replied she, "I deserve these reproaches for having ever listened to you. Sir George, I have done wrong, inexcusably wrong; but the hopeless, the dreary future that lies before me, might atone for my fault."

"And so you will," exclaimed he, "sacrifice me for Lord Marchmont, whom you both despise and hate?"

"I do despise, I do hate him!" returned Henrietta, bitterly; "but, not the less, I am his wife. Listen to me, Sir George. I cannot endure the humiliation of my own reproaches;