It is my duty to do it."
"I thank you for teaching me, whatever made you do it. If I could awaken
in you some unselfishness towards me and my new love, sir, it would be
the greatest gratitude I could show you. You conceal so many hard, bad
things under your word 'conservative,' that the gentle feelings, like
forgiveness, have forsaken you, I fear."
"No," the Colonel said, stiffly, his shoulders becoming more military,
"insults to my honor I never forgive. People who do not resent, have no
conservative principle."
"I forgive, as I hope to be forgiven, Joe, Aunt Patty, Van Dorn, and
you. I hope pity and mercy and sweet, unselfish love, such as I think
mine is, may grow in all of you! Oh, Colonel,"--she turned to him
earnestly, and, raising her hands to impress him, he merely noted the
elegance of her wrists and brown arms--"the buying and selling of these
human beings makes everybody unfeeling. It is stealing their souls and
bodies, whether they be bought at the court-house or kidnapped on the
roads. My dream of joy is to have a husband who will work with his own
free hands, and till his little farm, and sail his vessel, without a
slave. Above that I expect and ask nothing from the dear God who has so
long been my protector in this den of crime."
"Warm or cold, hectoring or tender, you are splendid, Hulda," McLane
said, his face fairly refulgent. "Now let me show you a conservative
picture of your real deserts.
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