“I could not help it, Marion—you gave yourself away to me so readily, you adopted so eagerly my proposals,” he said, excusing himself by blaming her. Her lips curled. “Have you nothing better than that to say for yourself? Have you no reparation to offer me?” she asked. And he answered, coldly: “None!” “George,” she cried, in agony, “think how I have loved you, how I have trusted you! Can you let me suffer thus and show me no pity?” “My pity could do you no practical good now,” he answered, carelessly. “And you _will not_ right the wrong—you will not cover my shame?” “I cannot,” he still repeated. “George Sumner, you do not know the bitter, cruel wrong that you are doing. Ah, Heaven! why was I so blind, so mad that I did not see and realize it myself? You do not once dream of the misery you are entailing upon future generations,” she cried, with clasped hands upraised in agony, as she remembered her father in his pride, and the will of the previous marquis, and knew that unless she became a lawful wife the entail would be cut off from that branch of their family, her father’s hopes forever destroyed, and herself irretrievably disgraced; and yet with a strange perversity she would not tell the man who had betrayed her of her position, when she knew it was that alone he desired, and not herself or her love. She would rather die than marry him and lift him to the position he craved, and know all the time that she was an unloved wife, a despised stepping-stone to his ambition. If he would but show the least sign of relenting, or of his by-gone affection for her, she would have told him joyfully. But he did not, he had none to show, and his next words extinguished every hope. “Marion, there is no use in prolonging this interview; what you wish cannot be.” Reader, did you ever see any one grow instantly old—the light, and life, and joy fade forever out of a face that had been fresh and lovely in one moment of time; and lines of age, misery, and care settle where there had been nothing but beauty before? If so, you may know something of how Marion Vance looked as she listened to what George Sumner told her on that dismal night in January, as she sat in that little reception-room at the end of the passage. “Can I believe you?” she said. “Can I believe any one would ruin a young and trusting girl like that? You mean to tell me that it was only a mock marriage—that ceremony and certificate that the pretended old man gave me only a sham?” “That was all,” George Sumner confessed, feeling strangely uneasy with those unearthly eyes fixed so steadily upon him. “That was _all_!” she repeated, with bitter emphasis. “I have but one more question to ask you,” she continued, still unnaturally calm, but looking like a dead person, all but her burning, restless eyes. “Once for all, will you marry me _now_, legally and honorably?” “I cannot.” “Why?”