'So you are determined?' exclaimed he with ill-restrained anger, as she repeated her resolve to him for the fourth or fifth time.
'Yes: I will have nothing more to say to you,' replied she firmly.
'Then my father and his reverence the curé may lose all hopes of me!' returned he bitterly. 'I have done much ill—I own it: I have won no one's esteem: I have been idle, irregular, profligate. But wherefore? Because I have had no one to care for me. Since my mother died, I have been left to myself, with no kind hand to guide me, no kind tongue to warn me: what wonder that youth should go astray?'
'No one to care for you!' exclaimed Julia, not without a tinge of sarcasm. 'Do not your father and monsieur the curé do their utmost for you?'
'The one reproves, and the other prays for me,' said Victor, with a derisive smile; then turning to Julia, with a face in which penitence, respect, and affection were well simulated, he exclaimed: 'but thou, dear Julia, art the sovereign of my soul! in whose hand my fate is placed. It is for you to shape my destiny: will you award me love or perdition? At your bidding, no honourable deed shall be too high to mark my obedience.'