tongue said 'Yes,' out
loud. Can such a lie as that, told in God's holy temple, sworn before
his own altar--can such perjury as that ever be forgiven me?

"But I shall sin worse still if I go back to him," she continued,
after a while. "I have no right, George, to ask anything from your
kindness as a cousin; but for your love's sake, your old love, which
you cannot forget, I do ask you to save me from this. But it is this
rather that I ask, that you will save me from the need of saving
myself."

That evening George sat up late alone, preparing for the morrow's
work, and trying to realize the position in which he found himself.
Mr. Pritchett, had he been there, would have whispered into his
ears, again and again, those ominous and all-important words, "Half
a million of money, Mr. George; half a million of money!" And,
indeed, though Mr. Pritchett was not there, the remembrance of those
overflowing coffers did force themselves upon his mind. Who can say
that he, if placed as Bertram then was, would not think of them?

He did think of them--not over deeply, nor with much sadness. He knew
that they were not to be his; neither the whole of them, nor any part
of them. So much his uncle had told him with sufficient plainness. He
knew also that they might all have been his: and then he thought of
that interview in which Mr. Bertram had endeavoured to beg from him a
promise to do that for which his own heart so strongly yearned. Yes;
he might have had the bride, and the money too. He might have been
sitting at that moment with the wife of his bosom, laying out in
gorgeous plans the splendour of their future life. It would be vain
to say that there was no disappointment at his heart.

But yet there was within his breast a feeling of gratified
independence which sufficed to support him. At least he might boast
that he had not sold himself; not aloud, but with that inward
boasting which is so common with most of us. There was a spirit
within him endowed with a greater wealth than any which Mr. Pritchett
might be able to enumerate; and an inward love, the loss of which
could hardly have been atoned for even by the possession of her whom
he had lost. Nor was this the passion which men call self-love. It
was rather a vigorous knowledge of his own worth as a man; a strong
will, which taught him that no price was sufficient to buy his assent
that black should be reckoned white, or white be reckoned black.

His uncle, he knew, ha