“Again you drive me to despair, Maximilian,” said Valentine, “again you plunge the dagger into the wound! What would you do, tell me, if your sister listened to such a proposition?”

“Mademoiselle,” replied Morrel with a bitter smile, “I am selfish⁠—you have already said so⁠—and as a selfish man I think not of what others would do in my situation, but of what I intend doing myself. I think only that I have known you not a whole year. From the day I first saw you, all my hopes of happiness have been in securing your affection. One day you acknowledged that you loved me, and since that day my hope of future happiness has rested on obtaining you, for to gain you would be life to me. Now, I think no more; I say only that fortune has turned against me⁠—I had thought to gain heaven, and now I have lost it. It is an everyday occurrence for a gambler to lose not only what he possesses but also what he has not.”

Morrel pronounced these words with perfect calmness; Valentine looked at him a moment with her large, scrutinizing eyes, endeavoring not to let Morrel discover the grief which struggled in her heart.