Augusta J. Evans

“ See, Bertie! this was her wedding ring. Her final message was, 'Give this to my darling!' Be comforted, dear Bertie, she loved you even to the end—supremely. You were her idol in death as in life. Our father's ring was the most sacred relic she owned, and she left it to you."
She attempted to place the gold band on one of his fingers, but he closed that hand, and the dark eyes so like his mother's, were for an instant dimmed by tears.
"Keep it; no sin of theft soils your hands. You can wear it without a blush. You never robbed an old man of his gold. That was my crime, I am a thief." ”

“ Dunbar fanned him with his hat. Then the heaving chest grew more quiet, and after a moment, his eyes lighted with a happy smile as they fastened on Beryl's face, bent over him.
"Gigina, sweet, faithful sister, it is almost heaven to see you once more. God is good, even to me."
"If I could have found you sooner! All these dreadful years I have lived at God's feet—with one prayer: let me help my Bertie, let me see my brother's face," moaned Beryl, pressing her lips to the clammy, fleshless hand she held against her throat. ”

“ Dunbar? Yes, you certainly have cause to dread him; but even if you should be indicted, you have twelve human hearts full of compassion to appeal to—and I can't think it possible a jury of sane men could look at you and condemn you. You must fight for your life; and what is far more to you than life, you must fight for your good name, for your character. Suspicion is not proof of crime, and there is no taint on you yet; for sin alone stains, and if you will only be brave and clear yourself as I know you can, what a grand triumph it will be. If you starve yourself you seal your doom. ”

“ There has been a coroner's inquest, and of course, as an old and intimate friend of General Darrington's, Mitchell feels he must do all he can. Poor old gentleman! So proud and aristocratic! To be murdered in his own house, like any common pauper! Positively it makes me sick. May the Lord have mercy on his soul."
"Amen!" murmured Leo.
"Will you go with me to Elm Bluff?"
"Oh, no! Not for worlds. Why should I? Women will only be in the way; and who could desire to contemplate so horrible a spectacle? It will merely harrow your feelings, Aunt Patty, and you can do no good." ”

“ We rail at Fate as triple monsters; but sometimes it happens, that the veil of inscrutability floats aside, for an instant, and we catch a glimpse of the radiant smile of an infinite love.
Hope had set in Beryl's sky, but a tender afterglow held off the coming night, when she thought of the face that had bent so yearningly above her, of the passionate voice and the thrilling touch that were now her most precious memories. The pearl which Miss Gordon had cast away as worthless, the discarded convict might surely, without sin, claim as her own for ever. ”

“ Saturated with chloroform you laid it over your grandfather's face. Load your soul with no more falsehoods. Confess the deeds of that awful night."
"I did not go back. I never saw 'Elm Bluff' after I met you. I know no more of the chloroform than you do. I have told the truth first and last, and always. I have no confession to make. I am as innocent as you are. Innocent! Innocent! You are going to hang me for a crime I did not commit. When you do, you will murder an innocent woman."
She spoke slowly, solemnly, and at intervals, as if she found it difficult to express her meaning. ”

“ Too feeble to walk alone, Beryl had pushed a chair before her, until she reached the door, and now stood grasping it, swaying to and fro, as she endeavored to steady herself. One hand held at her throat the black shawl, whose loosened folds fell like a mourning mantle to her feet, the other clutched the door, against the edge of which she leaned for support.
"Dyce, I have known for some days that I have no mother in this world. I have seen her. Your kind heart dreads giving me pain, but nothing can hurt me now. I cannot suffer any more, because I am bruised and beaten to numbness. ”

“ You husbands and fathers who trust your names, your honor, the peace of your hearts-almost the salvation of your souls—to the women you love: staking the dearest interest of humanity, the sanctity of that heaven on earth—your stainless homes—upon the fidelity of womanhood, can you doubt for one instant, that the prisoner will accept death rather than betray the man she loves? No human plummet has sounded the depths of a woman's devotion; no surveyor's chain will ever mark the limits of a woman's faithful, patient endurance ”

“ During the months that elapsed after Leo's visit to the "Anchorage", Beryl had surrendered her heart to the great happiness of dwelling, unrebuked by conscience, upon the precious assurance that the love of the man whom she had so persistently defied and shunned, was irrevocably hers. The sharpest pain that can horrow womanhood, springs from the contemplation of the superior right of another to the object of her affection; and though honor coerces submission to the just claims of a rival, renunciation of the beloved entails pangs that no anaesthetic has power to quiet. ”

“ Beryl caught the round, prettily turned wrist, and felt the feeble thread of pulse that was only a wild flutter, under the olive satin of the hot skin.
"This excitement only hastens the end you dread. Lie down, and I will pray for you."
"I shall soon lie down for ever. Let me walk a little, before my feet slide into the grave."
She staggered twice across the length of the cell, then tottered and fell back on the cot. At every respiration the thin nostrils flared, and the glazed ring below the eyes lost its sullen red tinge, took on blue shadows. ”

“ Never let me see your face again, or hear your voice, except in the court-room, when I am tried for the crime which you have told the world I committed. This boon is the sole possible reparation left you."
She had clasped her hands so tightly, that the nails were bloodless, and the fluttering in her white throat betrayed the throbbing of her heart.
"You are afraid of me, because you dread my discovering your secret, which is—"
"You have done your worst. You have locked me away from a dying mother; disgraced an innocent life; broken a girl's pure, happy heart; what else is there to dread? ”

“ You have cost me stinging humiliation, years of regret, of bitter disappointment; and the ceaselessly gnawing pain of a jealous dread that despite my vigilance, another man might some day possess you. I have money, influence, professional success, gratified ambition, and enviable social eminence; I have all but that which a man wants most, the one woman in the great wide world whom he loves truly, loves better than he loves himself; and who holds his heart in the hollow of her hand. I want my beautiful, proud, pure, stately white rose. I want my Beryl. ”

“ Over the head of pleading love stretched the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your shield, or on it."
Beryl put up her hand, drew his from her head to her lips, kissed it softly.
"Good-bye, Mr. Dunbar. I promise you one thing. If I find I cannot live, I will send for you. ”

“ Then my sun sickened and went out, and my hopes crumbled, and my youth shrivelled and perished forever; and the wide world is a rayless dungeon, and the girl Beryl is buried so deep, that the Angels of the Resurrection will never find her!—and I?—I am only a withered, disgraced woman, hurled into a den; trampled, branded; with a soul devoured by despairing bitterness, with a broken heart, a brain on fire! If you had drawn a knife across my throat, or sent a bullet through my temples, my spirit might have rested in the Beyond, and I could have forgiven that which hastened me to heaven ”

“ Prison walls melted away; she stood again in the New York attic, and combed, and brushed, and braided those raven locks, and saw the wan face of the beloved invalid, and the jasmine and violets she had pinned at her throat.
What had become of the proud, high-spirited ambitious girl, who laughed at adverse fortune, and forgot poverty in lofty aspirations? How long ago it seemed, since she kissed the dear faded cheek, and knelt for her mother's farewell benediction. Was it the same world? Was she the same Beryl; was the eternal and unchanging God over all, as of yore? ”

“ If, in the last hour, you had known all my peril, all that my promise entails, would you have released me? Would you have died content knowing that your idol was guarded and safe, behind the cold shield of your little girl's polluted body? The blood in my veins flowed from yours; I slept on your heart, I was the last baby whose lips fed at your bosom. Mother! Mother, if you had known all, could you have seen the load of guilt and shame and woe laid on your innocent child, and bought the life of your first-born, by the sacrifice of a scapegoat? ”

“ Is not justice, the beloved goddess of our idolatry, sometimes so blinded by clouds of argument, and confused by clamor that she fails indeed to see the dip of the beam? If the accused be guilty and escape conviction, he still lives; and while it is provided that no one can be twice put in jeopardy of his life for the same offence, vicious tendencies impel to renewal of crime, and Nemesis, the retriever of justice, may yet hunt him down. If the accused be innocent as the archangels, but suffer conviction and execution, what expiation can justice offer for judicially slaughtering him? ”

“ If you will cancel your police contracts, cease your search, go to Europe with Miss Dent, and pledge me your honor to marry Miss Gordon before you return, I will solemnly promise, bind myself in the sight of the God I serve, to live and to die Beryl Brentano; and never, without your consent and permission, will I look again on the face of the man whom you are hunting to death. The assurance of his safety will atone for all you have made me suffer; will nerve me to bear whatever the future may hold. ”

“ The truth that you are innocent has been established to the entire satisfaction of judge and jury, prosecution and Governor, sheriff, warden, and you are free. Not pardoned for that which all the world knows now you never committed; but acquitted without man's help, by the discovery of a fact which removes every shadow of suspicion from your name. You are at liberty, owing no thanks to human mercy; vindicated by a witness subpoenaed by the God of justice, in whom you trusted—even to the end. ”

“ If he is really your brother, what did you expect to accomplish by fostering my belief that he was your lover?"
"Mr. Dunbar, spare me this inquisition. Release me from the rack of suspense. Tell me why you set this snare, baited with Bertie's name?"
"I must first end my own suspense. If you wish to find the man, you tell me is your brother, I will aid you only when you have bared your heart to me. You had some powerful incentive unrevealed. I will know exactly, why you made me suffer all these years, the pangs of a devouring jealousy, keener than a vulture's talons." ”

“ In the dazzling zenith of temporal prosperity, Leo Gordon considered the heart of her betrothed her most precious possession; the one jewel which she would gladly have given all else to preserve; and yet, fate tore it from her grasp, and laid it at the feet, nay thrust it into the white hand of the woman who must die for a fiendish crime. A latter-day seer tells us, that in all realms, "Between laws there is no analogy, there is Continuity"; then in the universe of ethical sociology, who shall trace the illimitable ramifications of the Law of Compensation? ”

“ Your letter can only rivet more indissolubly the links of an affectionate friendship that must always bind you and me; but the future can hold no renewal of pledges which I feel assured would conduce neither to your happiness, nor to mine. Let us embalm the past and bury it tenderly; raising no mound to trip our friendly feet in years to come. The serenity of our future might be marred by retrospective gleams of the beautiful ring that once enclosed two lives; hence, I have ordered the diamonds reset in the form of a four-leaved clover, which will be sent to dear Kittie as an auspicious omen. ”

“ You never will. Did the bloodthirsty soul of Tiberius comprehend the stainless innocence of the victims he crushed for pastime on the rocks below Villa Jovis? There is but one arbiter for your hatred, the hang-man, to whom you would so gladly hurry me. Hunting a woman to the gallows is fit sport for men of your type."
Unable to withdraw his gaze from the magnetism of hers, he frowned and bit his lip. Was she feigning madness, or under the terrible nervous strain, did her mind wander?
"Your language is so enigmatical, that I am forced to conclude you resort to this method of defence. ”

“ For a nature so proudly poised, so averse to all impulsive manifestations of emotion, her affections were surprisingly warm and clinging, and she loved him with all the depth and fervor of her tender, generous heart; hence the slow torture of her humiliation in the hour of disenchantment. To women who love is given a sixth sense, a subtile instinct whereby, as in an occult alembic, they discern the poison that steals into their wine of joy; so Leo was not long in ignorance that her coveted kingdom belonged by right of conquest to another, and that she reigned only nominally and by courtesy. ”