"Hollingsworth has a heart of ice!" said I bitterly. "He is a wretch!"
"Do him no wrong," interrupted Zenobia, turning haughtily upon me.
"Presume not to estimate a man like Hollingsworth. It was my fault,
all along, and none of his. I see it now! He never sought me. Why
should he seek me? What had I to offer him? A miserable, bruised, and
battered heart, spoilt long before he met me. A life, too, hopelessly
entangled with a villain's! He did well to cast me off. God be
praised, he did it! And yet, had he trusted me, and borne with me a
little longer, I would have saved him all this trouble."
She was silent for a time, and stood with her eyes fixed on the ground.
Again raising them, her look was more mild and calm.
"Miles Coverdale!" said she.
"Well, Zenobia," I responded. "Can I do you any service?"
"Very little," she replied. "But it is my purpose, as you may well
imagine, to remove from Blithedale; and, most likely, I may not see
Hollingsworth again. A woman in my position, you understand, feels
scarcely at her ease among former friends. New faces,--unaccustomed
looks,--those only can she tolerate. She would pine among familiar
scenes; she would be apt to blush, too, under the eyes that knew her
secret; her heart might throb uncomfortably; she would mortify herself,
I suppose, with foolish notions of having sacrificed the honor of her
sex at the foot of proud, contumacious man. Poor womanhood, with its
rights and wrongs! Here will be new matter for my course of lectures,
at the idea of which you smiled, Mr. Coverdale, a month or two ago.
But, as you have really a heart and sympathies, as far as they go, and
as I shall depart without seeing Hollingsworth, I must entreat you to
be a messenger between him and me."
"Willingly," said I, wondering at the strange way in which her mind
seemed to vibrate from the deepest earnest to mere levity. "What is
the message?"
"True,--what is it?" exclaimed Zenobia. "After all, I hardly know. On
better consideration, I have no message. Tell him,--tell him something
pretty and pathetic, that will come nicely and sweetly into your
ballad,--anything you please, so it be tender and submissive enough.
Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him! "--She
spoke these words with the wildest energy.--"And give him--no, give
Priscilla--this!"