For me she has forfeited fortune, rank, all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted.

Heaven is my witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own! If I cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers.
Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I shall have strength to tear you from my 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.