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 When may your successor close these professional mockeries? fit only for weak patients who fear your sentence: to me, who boldly, eagerly demand it, speak reason and truth. When may I become as insensible as Harleigh?—Colder, death itself has not power to make me!"

Again he felt her pulse, and, while her eyes, with fiery impatience, called for a prompt decision, hesitatingly pronounced, that if she had any thing to settle, she could not be too expeditious.

Her countenance, her tone, her whole appearance, underwent, now, a sudden change; and she seemed as powerfully struck as if the decree which so earnestly she had sought, had been internally unexpected. She sustained herself, nevertheless, with firmness; thanked him, though in a low and husky voice, for his sincerity; and crossing her arms, and shutting her eyes, to obviate any distraction to her ideas by surrounding objects, delivered herself up to rapt meditation: becoming, in a moment, as