sleep
for weeks; when the earth, the air, yes, and the heavens were full of
nothing but her name, her face, her voice? When to have held her in my
arms, to have breathed into her ear one word of love, to have felt her
cheek fall against mine in confidence, in passion, in hope, would have
been to me the heaven which would have driven the devils from my soul
forever? Thomas, will you believe I do not know the uttermost of all you
are experiencing, when I here declare to you that there has been an hour
in my life when, if I had felt she could have been brought to love me, I
would have sacrificed Evelyn, my own soul, our father's hope, John
Poindexter's punishment, and become the weak thing you are to-day, and
gloried in it, I, Felix Cadwalader, the man of iron, who has never been
known to falter? But, Thomas, I overcame that feeling. I crushed down
that love, and I call upon you to do the same. You may marry her,
but----"

What stopped him? His own heart or my own impetuosity? Both, perhaps,
for at that moment I fell at his feet, and seizing his hand, kissed it
as I might a woman's. He seemed to grow cold and stiff under this
embrace, which showed both the delirium I was laboring under and the
relief I had gotten from his words. When he withdrew his hand, I feel
that my doom was about to be spoken, and I was not wrong. It came in
these words:

"Thomas, I have yielded to your importunity and granted you the
satisfaction which under the same circumstances I would have denied
myself. But it has not made me less hard toward you; indeed, the steel
with which you say my heart is bound seems tightening about it, as if
the momentary weakness in which I have indulged called for revenge.
Thomas, go on your way; make the girl your wife--I had rather you would,
since she is--what she is--but after she has taken your name, after she
believes herself secure in her honorable position and your love, then
you are to remember our compact and your oath--back upon John
Poindexter's care she is to be thrown, shortly, curtly, without
explanation or excuse; and if it costs you your life, you are to stand
firm in this attitude, using but one weapon in the struggle which may
open between you and her father, and that is, your name of Cadwalader.
You will not need any other. Thomas, do you swear to this? Or must I
direct my own power against Eva Poindexter, and, by telling her your
motive in courting her, make her hate you forever?"

"I will sw