Newman had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now, in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow's extremity, he had a feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere within the presence of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his
outgush of resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a glance; but with her actual presence there came influences which had too real an existence to be at once shaken off: recollections of the delicate and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate
outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had been unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel.
"In the name of Heaven," cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser indignation by this
outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,--"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim!