‘No, no; I cannot let you go until we have arrived at some explanation!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, detaining her by the folds of her dress. ‘You accuse me of deceiving you, and yet I thought my fault lay in being too outspoken. I know I shouldn’t have said what I did. I regret it deeply, from the bottom of my heart, and I humbly ask your pardon for the implied affront. Is not that sufficient?’ ‘It is more than sufficient,’ replied Lizzie coolly, as she disengaged her gown from his grasp, ‘and more than I wished you to say. However, I accept your apology, and we will say no more about it. Now, will you please to let me go?’ ‘No, you must stay! Put off your visits till this afternoon, and hear me out. I have not told you half my story. Have you quite forgotten that we are engaged to be married, Lizzie?’ ‘I have not forgotten it, but I have ceased to believe in it. You ruptured our engagement of your own free will.’ ‘But that was in my anger, and a few angry words, Lizzie, are powerless to undo the tie which had existed for a twelvemonth. I did not mean what I said. I have regretted it ever since, and I am here this morning to ask you to forgive it, and let our engagement stand as it did before.’ He was drawing closer to her, confident in his powers of fascination, but she pushed him from her. ‘Monsieur de Courcelles, I am surprised at you! I am surprised now to think that I should ever have believed in you, or thought the engagement you entered into with me anything but a blind for your more serious intentions in another quarter.’ He started backward with astonishment, little dreaming that she knew the whole of Maraquita’s sad history. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he gasped. ‘I have never been engaged to any woman but yourself. I don’t desire to marry any other woman. I came here to-day with the express purpose of asking you to condone the past, and marry me as soon as may be convenient to you.’ A few weeks before, how her heart would have beat at such a proposal, how her cheek would have flamed assent, and her humid eyes have sought his with grateful love. But now she sprang aside as if he had insulted her, and flashed defiance on him to repeat the offence. ‘How _dare_ you?’ she panted. ‘How dare you speak to me of marriage--you, who have treated me with scorn and contumely?’ ‘But I have acknowledged my error, Lizzie. Surely you are not a woman to resent a fault for ever. You _used_ to love me, I am sure of that.’ ‘Don’t be _too_ sure,’ she interposed hastily. ‘I loved _something_, I know,--some creature conjured up by my imagination, but not the man of flesh and blood I see before me. For I did not know you then, and no one can love an unknown person.’