If we insert our own conjectural amendments, we perhaps give a purport utterly at variance with the true one.

Yet unless we attempt something in this way, there must remain an unsightly gap, and a lack of continuousness and dependence in our narrative; so that it would arrive at certain inevitable catastrophes without due warning of their imminence.
Of so much we are sure, that there seemed to be a sadly mysterious fascination in the influence of this ill-omened person over Miriam; it was such as beasts and reptiles of subtle and evil nature sometimes exercise upon their victims.

Marvellous it was to see the hopelessness with which being naturally of so courageous a spirit she resigned herself to the thraldom in which he held her.

That iron chain, of which some of the massive links were round her feminine waist, and the others in his ruthless hand,--or which, perhaps, bound the pair together by a bond equally torturing to each,--must have been forged in some such unhallowed furnace as is only kindled by evil passions, and fed by evil deeds.
Yet, let us trust, there may have been no crime in Miriam, but only one of those fatalities which are among the most insoluble riddles propounded to mortal comprehension; the fatal decree by which every crime is made to be the agony of many innocent persons, as well as of the single guilty one.
It was, at any rate, but a feeble and despairing kind of remonstrance which she had now the energy to oppose against his persecution.
"You follow me too closely," she said, in low, faltering accents; "you allow me too scanty room to draw my breath.

Do you know what will be the end of this ?" "I know well what must be the end," he replied.
"Tell me, then," said Miriam, "that I may compare your foreboding with my own.