That said, he went, and for a
year I lived under the dread of his return and all the obligations that
return would entail. Then came tidings of his death, tidings for which he
may not have been responsible, but which he never contradicted, and I
thought myself free--free to enjoy life, and the fortune that had so
unexpectedly come to me; free to love and, alas! free to marry. And that
is why," she pursued, in all the anguish of a dreadful retrospect, "I
recoiled in such horror and hung, a dead weight on your arm, when on
turning from the altar where we had just pledged ourselves to mutual love
and mutual life, I saw among the faces before me the changed but still
recognizable one of my brother, and beheld him make the fatal sign which
meant, 'You are wanted. Come at once.'"
"Wretch!" issued from the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom,
as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now,
that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful
obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose
upon another, whatsoever the Cause, holy or unholy, he represents?"
"Mercy? It is the weakness of the easy soul. There is no ease here," he
cried, touching his breast with no gentle hand.
"Then you forget my money," suggested Georgian. "Can you expect mercy
from a man who sees a million just within his grasp? I know," she
acknowledged, as Hazen lifted that same ungentle hand in haughty protest,
"that it was not for himself.
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