heart; it is my duty, my fate.
With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not,
turn not away. Forgive the word; but I must speak,--my heart will out;
yes, abhorred nuptials! Between my grave and the altar, would--would
that I had a choice!"

From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to
check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins,
as a ghost from the grave. The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood
in the aperture,--stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was
so colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of
aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.

Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan
turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse of the pierced and loving
heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia's
side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.

"Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment. He
spoke but to deceive me,--me, who loved him once! Mine alone, mine is
the crime. He knows all your worth. Pity--pity--pity on yourself, on
him, on me!"

Lucretia's eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face
lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was audible. At length
she drew herself from her sister's clasp, and walked steadily up to
Mainwaring. She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she
enjoyed his shame and terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden,
who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia's movements, and, without
hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue,
but had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and
broke the charm of her awe,--before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in,
and giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms
round Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of
grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.

"My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the
low-born! He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow,--all false!" Thus
said Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful,
at last only quietly abstracted. "Rise, sir," she then added, with her
most imperious tone; "do you not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my
presence to console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me! Go, sir, you
are free!"

"Hear me," faltere