An amused laugh broke from the girl’s fresh red lips as she looked up into the handsome, cynical face. “Ah, if you were less heartless, Jess,” he sighed. “But even the hardest heart may sometimes suffer, and your day may come. Perhaps you may experience some day the love that I feel now, and if the object of your affection laughs at you in your face for your folly in loving, then you will know what I am suffering to-night.” “I did not mean to do anything so positively rude as that!” declared Jess, “but somehow this whole transaction seems so very ridiculous to me, just as if I were a bale of tobacco put up for a purchaser. You were to come here and look me over, and if I half suited you, you would marry me, because that was the condition of that dreadful will. But I tell you here and now that I have something to say in the matter--a voice to raise--since my future happiness is at stake. All the money your uncle left could not make me marry a man I did not love. And I do not love you, that is certain, Mr. Dinsmore. And what’s more, I never will. Marriage between us is, therefore, impossible. Speak no more of it, for it can never be, I tell you.” He was silent from sheer rage. He knew if he opened his lips to speak he would curse her as she stood there before him in the bright, white moonlight. Was ever so splendid a fortune lost! and all through the willful caprice of a girl. It fairly drove him mad to think of it--ay, mad--and desperate. CHAPTER XVII. WAS IT THE DECREE OF FATE? “Mark well, who wed should give the hand With undivided heart, and stand In single purpose true to one; Or else the loving soul’s undone, And, like the curse which blights the land, The heart’s in variance with the hand, And found, alas! too late--too late, Fate linked them to a faithless mate, They thought the flower of chivalry.” Even in that moment of fierce anger, this man, who had so much at stake, did not give way to his feelings. Instead he sought to use every persuasion, every argument possible to dispel her prejudice, and then win her heart. But it seemed a useless attempt. She simply grew more and more annoyed with him for his persistence; was actually bored by his eloquent avowal of love. It was to be a long and laborious task, awakening her interest, to say nothing of hoping for a tenderer regard, he could plainly foresee, and when she turned away from him, with never a word of answer in response to his passionate appeal, he determined upon a clever maneuver to bring her to accepting him. “You have spoiled my hour at the cataract,” she said, pouting like a spoiled child, “and now I am going back to the house. You shall not accompany me the next time.” If she had looked at him she would have seen that his face wore a dull red flush in the white moonlight. “You shall never leave this spot until you have promised to marry me, Jess, or have looked upon your work, if you persist in refusing me.”