The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

40 REYNOLDS’ WORKS us to continue arguing thus. Understand well your own position, think not of mine. Your lover lies under sentence of death; with the least sacrifice on your part you can save him, — a sacrifice, too, the secret of which need never be known to him —” “Enough, sir!’’ ejaculated Kate Marshall, once more displaying all the prideful dignity of an injured, outraged woman. ‘“ I have already heard too much. Edward Russell must die —” She paused for a few moments, as the tide of unutterable feelings surged up into her throat, and the tears came to the very brims of her eyes, but with an almost pre- terhuman effort she kept them back, and in a voice of un- natural calmness went on to say, “ Yes, he must die, for he would not consent to be saved at such a sacrifice as that which you have dared to suggest. Ah, you spoke of keeping the foul atrocity away from his ears? Think you that I could look him in the face without the telltale blush of shame revealing my dishonour? No, I am not the adept in dissimu- lation which your Excellency may be. And as for him whose life I am come to ask, I repeat that he would scorn to accept it on such conditions; he would execrate you, he would loathe me, he would refuse to retain a life that had been purchased by so much villainy on the one hand and so much pollution on the other. Yes, sir, the contemned, the branded, the doomed smuggler has his own fine feelings, at least in one sense, and those feelings finer than you, who are a great minister, can possibly boast of possessing. ‘These feelings, sir, shall not be wounded nor outraged by me. Oh, in my eyes, infinitely superior is that contemned, branded, and doomed smuggler, though wearing the felon’s chains in a dungeon-cell, infinitely superior is he, I say, than the great statesman who stands before me now, proposing in his dastard cowardice and abhorrent meanness of soul to make a human life the subject of barter for a woman’s honour. I leave you, sir; I leave you to the enjoyment of such feelings as you may be enabled to experience after a scene such as this. I leave you for the purpose of writing to the Marquis of Villebelle, and informing that generous nobleman how his well-meant letter has been received, and the treatment it has procured me at your hands. But that is not all, for where- soever words may proclaim the infamy of your conduct shall I make it known; and there is in my heart the conviction CONNIE OO KS m