alone has so
prolonged our sojourn here. As soon as I receive it, we shall not
remain here one moment longer. We will immediately cross to France,
dearest Sara, where you shall find new friends, who already look
forward to the pleasure of seeing and loving you. And these new friends
shall be the witnesses of our union----

SARA.

They shall be the witnesses of our union? Cruel man, our union, then,
is not to be in my native land? I shall leave my country as a criminal?
And as such, you think, I should have the courage to trust myself to
the ocean. The heart of him must be calmer or more impious than mine,
who, only for a moment, can see with indifference between himself and
destruction, nothing but a quivering plank. Death would roar at me in
every wave that struck against the vessel, every wind would howl its
curses after me from my native shore, and the slightest storm would
seem a sentence of death pronounced upon me. No, Mellefont, you cannot
be so cruel to me! If I live to see the completion of this agreement,
you must not grudge another day, to be spent here. This must be the
day, on which you shall teach me to forget the tortures of all these
tearful days. This must be the sacred day--alas! which day will it be?

MELLEFONT.

But do you consider, Sara, that our marriage here would lack those
ceremonies which are due to it?

SARA.

A sacred act does not acquire more force through ceremonies.

MELLEFONT.

But----

SARA.

I am astonished. You surely will not insist on such a trivial pretext?
O Mellefont, Mellefont! had I not made for myself an inviolable
law, never to doubt the sincerity of your love, this circumstance
might----But too much of this already, it might seem as if I had been
doubting it even now.

MELLEFONT.

The first moment of your doubt would be the last moment of my life!
Alas, Sara, what have I done, that you should remind me even of the
possibility of it? It is true the confessions, which I have made to you
without fear, of my early excesses cannot do me honour, but they should
at least awaken confidence. A coquettish Marwood held me in her meshes,
because I felt for her that which is so often taken for love which it
so rarely is. I should still bear her shameful fetters, had not Heaven,
which