e
possessed a romantic "leaning, at least, to virtue's side."

This was oddly exemplified now, (to return to their present position;)
for as soon as her partial recovery had removed his alarm, he grew cold,
and almost severe in his manner, and broke forth--

"_So_, then, Winifred would willingly pore over the love-letters of a
sweetheart while under a husband's roof! She thinks this beauty enough
for _him_--she would reserve her thoughts, wishes, every thing else, for
his old rival;--every thing but what a ring, and a few words, makes his
right by law, the poor husband is to leave to any old sweetheart that
may come prowling round his gates! That's gross! Is it _not_, Winifred?"

Alas! the heart-broken young woman had been meditating on far other
issue to their brief attachment! On death!--death on her wedding-day, as
the only means of preserving at once her father's liberty and her own
virtue; for her reading had taught her that marriage, where the mind and
heart were so wholly engaged elsewhere, was no better than legalised
prostitution. With a look of dark intensity of meaning, Winifred broke
her lengthened silence, saying hollowly--

"I was not looking so far forward--I was not looking beyond _that_
day--not to that"----_night_, she would have said, but modesty stopped
her speech. "And _you_ can be so calm! so thoughtful! _You_ can be
reasoning about my duties during a life! you can be pleading for _my_
future husband! Oh, I wish I were like you! And yet, I bless God, that
you are not like _me_! I would not have you feel as I do for the world!
No, not even know what I am feeling, thinking, dearest, at this moment."

"No!" David again muttered, more and more severely, "I cannot submit to
have my letters and trifling keepsakes to be tossed about by _him_! It
is weakness to wish it, Winifred Bevan; and worse for me to grant it."

"You shall have them all--all--all!" she exclaimed in passionate agony
composed of tenderness, anguish, anger, recklessness, with a bitterness
of irony keener to her own heart, than to him who roused that terrible
reaction of her nature. "I'll run and fetch them all this very night!
Oh, they'll serve for _your_ new love. You may copy your letters. I'm
sure, if she have a human heart, they'll move it--they'll win it! Strike
my name out, and you may send the very letters. She will not know that
another heart was broken by giving them up! She will not know the stains
are tears of pleasure dr