and low, that I hardly could make out an intelligible sentence, on either side. What I seem to remember, I yet suspect, may have been patched together by my fancy, in brooding over the matter, afterwards.
"Why not fling the girl off," said Westervelt, "and let her go?"
"She clung to me from the first," replied Zenobia. "I neither know nor care what it is in me that so attaches her. But she loves me, and I will not fail her."
"She will plague you, then," said he, "in more ways than one."
"The poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia. "She can do me neither good nor harm. How should she?"
I know not what reply Westervelt whispered; nor did Zenobia's subsequent exclamation give me any clue, except that it evidently inspired her with horror and disgust.
"With what kind of a being am I linked?" cried she. "If my Creator cares aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond!"
"I did not think it weighed so heavily," said her companion.
"Nevertheless," answered Zenobia, "it will strangle me, at last!"
And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan; a sound which, struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength, affected me more than if she had made the wood dolorously vocal with a thousand shrieks and wails.
Other mysterious words, besides what are above written, they spoke together; but I understood no more,
