"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, Isuppose, 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!"Thus saying, she took the jewelled flower out of her hair; and it struck me as the act of a queen, when worsted in a combat, discrowning herself, as if she found a sort of relief in abasing all her pride.
"Bid her wear this for Zenobia's sake," she continued."She is a pretty little creature, and will make as soft and gentle a wife as the veriest Bluebeard could desire.Pity that she must fade so soon! These delicate and puny maidens always do.Ten years hence, let Hollingsworth look at my face and Priscilla's, and then choose betwixt them.Or, if he pleases, let him do it now."How magnificently Zenobia looked as she said this! The effect of her beauty was even heightened by the over-consciousness and self-recognition of it, into which, I suppose, Hollingsworth's scorn had driven her.She understood the look of admiration in my face; and--Zenobia to the last--it gave her pleasure.
"It is an endless pity," said she, "that I had not bethought myself of winning your heart, Mr.Coverdale, instead of Hollingsworth's.I think Ishould have succeeded, and many women would have deemed you the worthier conquest of the two.You are certainly much the handsomest man.But there is a fate in these things.And beauty, in a man, has been of little account with me since my earliest girlhood, when, for once, it turned my head.Now, farewell!""Zenobia, whither are you going?" I asked.
