He has a nature that your opportunities would bring real
refinement from. He respects me, wretched as I am; I read it in his
eyes. You are looking for a way to degrade me in my own feelings, yet to
deceive me. Can you be a gentleman?"
She was serene as if she had said nothing, though she rose up, and stood
at one side of the fireplace, opposite him; between them was a print of
General Jackson riding over the British.
In that moment Allan McLane felt that the girl was cheap at her
grandmother's figure.
He had always conceived her a flexible, peculiar child; in a few minutes
she had grown years, and become a rare and nearly stately woman, not now
to be moulded, but to be tempted with large, worldly propositions.
"May I ask who this lover is that I am so much beneath, Hulda--I, who
have taught you the accomplishments you chastise me with? I found you
sand; I made you crystal."
He drew out a large pongee handkerchief, and really dropped some tears
into it. She continued, cool and unmoved:
"My love is Levin Dennis, from Princess Anne. I am not afraid to tell
it."
"Why?"
"Because I want his danger and mine to be fully known to him, and make
him a man."
The Colonel folded his pongee, and came again to Hulda's side.
"That dissipated boy! Oh, Hulda, where is your real pride? He has
abandoned his mother. He is a poor gypsy. No, I must save you from such
a mistake.
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