Miss St. Clare stood before him. Perhaps at that moment his heart was softened by what he had just heard: I know not; but approaching her, “St. Clare,” he cried, “give me your hand: it is for the last time I ask it. I have been absent for some months. I have heard that which afflicts me. Do not you also greet me unkindly. Pardon the past. I may have had errors; but to save, to reclaim you, is there any thing I would not do?” St. Clare made no answer. “You may have discomforts of which I know not. Perhaps you are poor and unprotected. All that I possess, I would give you, if that would render you more happy.” Still she made no reply. “You know not, I fancy, that my castles have been restored to me, and a gallant ship given me by the English court. I have sailed, St. Clare: I only now return for a few weeks, before I am called hence for ever. Accept some mark of my regard; and pardon an involuntary fault. Give me your hand.”—“Never,” she replied: “all others, upon this new accession of good fortune, shall greet and receive you with delight. The world shall smile upon you, Glenarvon; but I never. I forgave you my own injuries, but not Calantha’s and my country’s. “Is it possible, that one so young as you are, and this too but a first fault, is it possible you can be so unrelenting?”—“A first fault, Glenarvon! The lessons you have taught were not in vain: they have been since repeated; but my crimes be on you!”—“Is it not for your sake, miserable outcast, alone, that I asked you to forgive me? What is your forgiveness to me? I am wealthy, and protected: am I not? Tell me, wretched girl, what are you?”—“Solitary, poor, abandoned, degraded,” said Miss St. Clare: “why do you ask? you know it.”—“And yet when I offer all things to you, cannot you bring that stubborn heart to pardon?”—“No: were it in the hour of death, I could not.”—“Oh, Elinor, do not curse me at that hour. I am miserable enough.”—“The curse of a broken heart is terrible,” said Miss St. Clare, as she left him; “but it is already given. Vain is that youthful air; vain, my lord, your courtesy, and smiles, and fair endowments:—the curse of a broken heart is on you: and, by night and by day, it cries to you as from the grave. Farewell, Glenarvon: we shall meet no more.” Glenarvon descended by the glen: his followers passed him in the well known haunt; but each as they passed him muttered unintelligible sounds of discontent: though the words, “ill luck to you,” not unfrequently fell upon his ear. CHAPTER XCII.