or to resist. Then she had promised—that was the terrible truth; and so she had only entreated, and cried, and besought her father to have mercy on her; and these entreaties, prayers, and sobs having had no effect, had yielded and gone into her bedchamber and, upon her knees, with Kate's little Bible open before her, asked the great heavenly Father to take care of her.
All this splendid pageant—all this roar of cannon, blare of trumpets, rumbling thunder of the incessant drums—could not make her heart any lighter; her face was still dark. And the spectacle had as little effect upon the other personages of the narrative. Mr. Effingham, seated in his room, smiled scornfully as the music and the people's shouts came to him. He felt that all that noisy and joyous world was alien to him—cared nothing for him—was perfectly indifferent whether he suffered or was happy. He despised the empty fools in his heart, without reflecting that the jar and discord was not in the music and the voices but in himself. And this was the audience he would have to see him play Benedick!—these plebeian voices would have liberty to applaud or hiss him!—the thought nearly opened his eyes to the true character of the step he was about to take. What was he about to do? That night he was going to the palace of the Governor with an actress leaning on his arm—there to defy the whole Colony of Virginia; in effect to say to them, "Look! you laugh at me—I show you that I scorn you!"—then in a day or two his name would be published in a placard, "The part of Benedick, by Champ Effingham, Esq."—to be made the subject of satirical and insulting comment by the very boors and overseers. These two things he was about to do, and he drew back for a moment for an instant hesitated. But suddenly the interview he had with Hamilton came back to him, and his lip was wreathed with his reckless sneer again. They would not permit him, forsooth!—his appearance at the ball with Miss Hallam would be regarded
