But she could not shut out the vision of the beautiful, rather weak face that arose before her in all its pale, pathetic, appealing sadness. Those large, dark, melancholy eyes haunted her. She could not rouse her soul to any anger against him. She loved him too well, as she had always done from her earliest infancy to this moment. She could not now remember the day when she had not loved him better than any one in the whole world. She loved him now as well as ever—as her uncle, her Marcel—but she loathed him as a suitor for her hand. And withal she pitied him deeply. “Poor Marcel!” she murmured to herself when she had grown a little calmer. “Poor Marcel! He has always sacrificed himself for the happiness of other people—even for auntie—and he has never had any happiness himself. And now he is losing his reason. He certainly is losing his reason, or he would never dream of such a mad act as marrying—Ugh! I will not think of it. What a misfortune. What can have caused it? His long, lonely life perhaps. And perhaps also, as he loves me so dearly, and he has no one else but me to love, he is afraid that I will do as other young ladies do—that is, some time or other, marry and leave him. Foolish old Marcel, to think that I would leave him for any one else! If he did but know me, he would know that I should never marry. But the more I think of it, the surer I feel that that is the reason of his strange conduct. He loves me; he has no one left but me, and he fears that I will leave him, and so he wants to marry me just to prevent my going, and to insure my staying with him as long as he lives. But, oh, what an alternative!” she added, with a shudder. She was, however, growing calmer, having found, as she supposed, a solution of the whole difficulty. “Now,” she continued her mental argument, “when Marcel is made to understand that I will never leave him so long as he lives, and never even wish to leave him, but will remain with him, and be perfectly happy with him, in devoting myself entirely to his service, as the most loving and dutiful daughter or niece could do, then, of course, he will be perfectly satisfied.” The ringing of the first dinner-bell aroused her from her reverie.