Nervously she paused and set her eyes with intense
stare on Montague; then vaulted into his arms and embraced him,
crying, "Is not my Annette here?" as a tear stole down her cheeks.
Her quick eye detected trouble in his deportment; she grasped his
left hand firmly in her right, and with quivering frame besought him
to keep her no longer in the agony of suspense. "Why thus suddenly
have you come? ah!-you disclose a deep-rooted trouble in not
forewarning me! tell me all and relieve my feelings!" she
ejaculated, in broken accents. "I was driven from that country
because I loved nature and obeyed its laws. My very soul loved its
greatness, and would have done battle for its glories-yea, I loved
it for the many blessings it hath for the favoured; but one dark
stain on its bright escutcheon so betrayed justice, that no home was
there for me-none for the wife I had married in lawful wedlock."
Here the woman, in agonising throbs, interrupted him by enquiring
why he said there was no home for the wife he had married in lawful
wedlock-was not the land of the puritans free? "Nay!" he answered,
in a measured tone, shaking his head, "it is bestained not with
their crimes-for dearly do they love justice and regard the rights
of man-but with the dark deeds of the man-seller, who, heedless of
their feelings, and despising their moral rectitude, would make
solitary those happy homes that brighten in greatness over its
soil." Again, frantic of anxiety, did the woman interrupt him:
"Heavens!-she is not dragged back into slavery?" she enquired, her
emotions rising beyond her power of restraint, as she drew bitter
pangs from painful truths.
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