"As your mistress," she repeated,--"and I her mother, am to stand by and see it, and know that my girl is dishonoured! Would your mother have borne that for your sister?
How would it be if your sister were as that girl is now ?" "I have no sister." "And therefore you are thus hard-hearted.

She shall never be your harlot;--never.

I would myself sooner take from her the life I gave her.
You have destroyed her, but she shall never be a thing so low as that." "I will marry her,--in a foreign land." "And why not here?
She is as good as you.

Why should she not bear the name you are so proud of dinning into our ears?
Why should she not be a Countess?
Has she ever disgraced herself?
If she is disgraced in your eyes you must be a Devil." "It is not that," he said hoarsely.
"What is it?
What has she done that she should be thus punished?
Tell me, man, that she shall be your lawful wife." As she said this she caught him roughly by the collar of his coat and shook him with her arm.
"It cannot be so," said the Earl Of Scroope.
"It cannot be so! But I say it shall,--or,--or--! What are you, that she should be in your hands like this?
Say that she shall be your wife, or you shall never live to speak to another woman." The peril of his position on the top of the cliff had not occurred to him;--nor did it occur to him now.

He had been there so often that the place gave him no sense of danger.