"
"You forced this on me," replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly
in the face. "Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders
yonder? Do I assume to be your judge? No; except so far as I have
an unquestionable right of judgment, in order to settle my own line
of behavior towards those with whom the events of life bring me in
contact. True, I have already judged you, but not on the world's
part,--neither do I pretend to pass a sentence!"
"Ah, this is very good!" cried Zenobia with a smile. "What strange
beings you men are, Mr. Coverdale!--is it not so? It is the simplest
thing in the world with you to bring a woman before your secret
tribunals, and judge and condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go
free without a sentence. The misfortune is, that this same secret
tribunal chances to be the only judgment-seat that a true woman
stands in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquittal is
equivalent to a death sentence!"
The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my
impression that a crisis had just come and gone. On Hollingsworth's
brow it had left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his
own will was the instrument. In Zenobia's whole person, beholding
her more closely, I saw a riotous agitation; the almost delirious
disquietude of a great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished
one felt her strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed
to renew the contest. My sensations were as if I had come upon a
battlefield before the smoke was as yet cleared away.
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