'Relinquish?' he repeated, 'What now? Now, that all delicacy for this wild, eccentric, though so generous Elinor is at an end? that she has, herself, annulled your engagement? Relinquish, now, the hopes so long pursued,--so difficultly caught? No, I swear to you--'
Juliet arose. 'Oh hold, Mr Harleigh!' she cried; 'recollect yourself a moment! I lament if I have, involuntarily, caused you any transient mistake; yet, do me the justice to reflect, that I have never cast my destiny upon that of Miss Joddrel. No decision, therefore, of hers can make any change in mine.'
She again put her hand upon the lock of the door.
Harleigh fixt upon her his eyes, which spoke the severest disturbance, while, in tremulous accents, he uttered, 'And can you leave me thus, to wasting despondence?--and with this cold, chilling, blighting composure?--Is it from pitiless apathy, which incapacitates for judging of torments which it does not experience?--O no! Those eyes that so often glisten with the most touching sensibility,--those cheeks that so beautifully mantle with the varying dies of quick transition of sentiment,--that mouth, which so expressively plays in harmony with every word,--nay, every thought,--all, all announce a heart where every virtue is seconded and softened by every feeling!--a mind alive to the quickest sensations, yet invigorated with the ablest understanding! a soul of angelic purity!--'
Some sound from the passage made him suddenly stop, and remove his foot; while the hand of Juliet dropt from the lock. They were both silent, and both, affrighted, stood suspended; till Juliet, shocked at the impropriety of such a situation, forced herself to open the door,--at the other side of which, looking more dead than alive, stood Elinor, leaning upon her sister.
'I began to think,' she cried, in a hollow tone, 'that you were eloped!--and determining to trust to no messenger, I came myself.' She then endeavoured to call forth a smile; but it visited so unwillingly features nearly distorted by internal agony, that it gave a cast almost ghastly to her countenance.
'Why, Harleigh,' she cried, 'should you thus shun me? Have I not given back her plighted faith to Ellis? Yet I am not ignorant how tired you must be of those old thread-bare topics, bowls, daggers, poignards, and bodkins: but they have had their reign, and are now dethroned. What remains is plain, common, stupid rationality. I wish to converse with you, Albert, only as a casuist; and upon a point of conscience which you alone can settle. For this world, and for all that belongs to it, all, with me, is utterly over! I have neither care nor interest left in it; and I have no belief that there is any other. I am very composedly ready, therefore, to take my last nap. I merely wish to learn, before I return to my torpid ignorance, whether it can be a fact, that you, Harleigh, you! believe in a future state for mortal man? And I engage you by your friendship,--which I still prize above all things! and by your honour, which you, I know, prize in the same manner, to answer me this question, instantly and categorically.'