nd beheld the fire of
her shining eyes, of which I can give no idea to those who have never
known their dear ones struck down by her fatal malady, unless I compare
those eyes to balls of burnished silver. "Die!" I said. "Henriette, I
command you to live. You used to ask an oath of me, I now ask one
of you. Swear to me that you will send for Origet and obey him in
everything."

"Would you oppose the mercy of God?" she said, interrupting me with a
cry of despair at being thus misunderstood.

"You do not love me enough to obey me blindly, as that miserable Lady
Dudley does?"

"Yes, yes, I will do all you ask," she cried, goaded by jealousy.

"Then I stay," I said, kissing her on the eyelids.

Frightened at the words, she escaped from my arms and leaned against a
tree; then she turned and walked rapidly homeward without looking back.
But I followed her; she was weeping and praying. When we reached the
lawn I took her hand and kissed it respectfully. This submission touched
her.

"I am yours--forever, and as you will," I said; "for I love you as your
aunt loved you."

She trembled and wrung my hand.

"One look," I said, "one more, one last of our old looks! The woman who
gives herself wholly," I cried, my soul illumined by the glance she gave
me, "gives less of life and soul than I have now received. Henriette,
thou art my best-beloved--my only love."

"I shall live!" she said; "but cure yourself as well."

That look had effaced the memory of Arabella's sarcasms. Thus I was the
plaything of the two irreconcilable passions I have now described to
you; I was influenced by each alternately. I loved an angel and a demon;
two women equally beautiful,--one adorned with all the virtues which we
decry through hatred of our own imperfections, the other with all the
vices which we deify through selfishness. Returning along that avenue,
looking back again and again at Madame de Mortsauf, as she leaned
against a tree surrounded by her children who waved their handkerchiefs,
I detected in my soul an emotion of pride in finding myself the arbiter
of two such destinies; the glory, in ways so different, of women so
distinguished; proud of inspiring such great passions that death must
come to whichever I abandoned. Ah! believe me, that passing conceit has
been doubly punished!

I know not what demon prompted me to remain with Arabella and await
the moment when the death of the count might give me Henriette; for she
would ever