THE PRICE OF A SOUL.

I love you, love you; for your love would lose
State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem.
--BYRON.

He spoke these two words with such a desperate look, in such a desperate
tone, that Mary Grey was half frightened; for she saw that he was in
that fatal mood in which men have been driven to crime or death for the
love of woman.

This was the mood to which she wished to bring him, and in which she
wished to keep him until he should have done his work; and yet it half
frightened her now.

"Hush--hush!" she murmured. "Be quiet! There are people in the next
room. They may hear you. And I am sure they should do so they would take
you for a lunatic."

"But--do you believe me? Do you believe that I would defy the universe
in your service? Do you believe me? If not, try me!" he aspirated,
vehemently.

"I _do_ believe you. And some day I _will_ try you. You have won my
love; but he who wins my hand must first prove his love for me in a way
that will leave no doubt upon the fact."

"Then I am safe, for I am sure to prove it," he said, with a sigh of
intense relief.

She looked at him again, and knew that he spoke as he felt. Yes, for her
sake he would "march to death as to a festival."

"Now, then, will you be good and quiet and tell me news of my old
neighbors at Wendover and Blue Cliffs?" she archly inquired.

"I do not think I can. I wish to sit here and look at you and think only
of you. It would be a painful wrench to tear away my thoughts from you
and employ them upon anything else. Let me sit here in my heaven!" he
pleaded.

"Yes, love; but remember I am very anxious to know something about my
dear friends, whom I have not heard from for a month. Can not you
gratify me?" coaxed Mary Grey.

"I can not fix my mind upon them long enough to remember anything. You
absorb it all," he answered, dreamily gazing upon her.

"But if I ask you questions surely you can answer them," said Mary Grey,
who, though very anxious for information later than that afforded by
Mrs. Wheatfield's letter, was not ill-pleased at the devotion which
baffled her curiosity.

"Yes, I will answer any question you ask. That will not be so much of a
wrench," he said.

"Then how is my dear friend, Emma Cavendish?" inquired the traitress.

"Well and happy, at Blue Cliffs," answered the lover.

"Is it true, as I hear, that she is to marry--" Mary Grey hes