“And now I have said all I had to say,” rejoined Marguerite: “my only hope was in you, Emanuel; for although you cannot comprehend any deep-seated feeling, you are not cruel. I came to you in tears, look at me and you will see that it is true--I came to you to say, ‘Brother, this marriage is the misfortune, is the misery of my life--I would prefer a convent--I would prefer death to it--and you have not listened to me, or if you have listened, you have not understood me. Well, then, I will address myself to this man--I will appeal to his honor, to his delicacy; if that should not be sufficient, I will tell him all; my love for another, my weakness, my fault, my crime! I will tell him that I have a child; that although he was torn from me, although I have never since seen him, although I am ignorant of his abode, still my child exists. A child cannot die, without his death striking some chord within its mother’s heart. In short I will tell him, should it be necessary, that I still love another, that I cannot love him, and that I never will.” “Well! tell him all this,” cried Emanuel, irritated by her persistence, “and that evening we will sign the contract, and the next day you will be Baroness de Lectoure.” “And then,” replied Marguerite, “then, I shall be truly the most miserable woman in existence, for I should then have a brother whom I should no longer love, and a husband for whom I should have no esteem. Farewell, Emanuel; believe me this contract is not yet signed.” And after saying these words, Marguerite withdrew with that deep and settled despair upon her features, which could not for a moment be mistaken. And Emanuel, convinced that he had not, as he had anticipated, obtained a victory, but that the struggle was still to be continued, gazed after her with an anxiety which was not devoid of tenderness. After a few moments of silence, in which he sat pensive and motionless, he turned round and saw Captain Paul, whom he had completely forgotten, standing at the door of the study, and then considering the vital importance it was to him to get possession of the papers, which the captain had offered him, he hurriedly sat down at the table, took a pen and paper, and turning towards him, said-- “And now, sir, we are again alone, and there is nothing to prevent our at once concluding this affair. In what terms do you wish the promise to be drawn up? Dictate them, I am ready to write them down.” “It is now useless,” coldly replied the captain. “And why so?” “I have changed my mind.” “How is that?” said Emanuel, rising, alarmed at the consequences which he perceived might arise from words which he was far from expecting. “I will give,” replied Paul, with the calmness of a fixed determination, “the hundred thousand livres to the child, and I will find a husband for your sister.”