"My lord," she said very firmly, "I can not accuse you of harshness to my sinful and unhappy brother. His offense might perhaps deserve a heavier punishment than that which you inflict with such playful scorn. But whatever his penance, contempt now, or poverty later, I feel that his sister should be by his side to share it. I am not innocent, if he be guilty; and, wreck though he be, nothing else on this dark sea of life is now left to me to cling to. Hush, my lord! I shall not leave this vessel. All that I entreat of you is, to order your men to respect my brother, since a woman will be by his side." "But, Marchesa, this can not be; and--" "Beatrice, Beatrice--and me!--our betrothal? Do you forgot me?"' cried Frank in reproachful agony. "No, young and too noble lover; I shall remember you ever in my prayers. But listen. I have been deceived--hurried on, I might say--by others, but also, and far more, by my own mad and blinded heart--deceived, hurried on, to wrong you and to belie myself. My shame burns into me when I think that I could have inflicted on you the just anger of your family--linked you to my own ruined fortunes, my own tarnished name--my own--" "Your own generous, loving heart!--that is all I asked!" cried Frank. "Cease, cease--that heart is mine still!" Tears gushed from the Italian's eyes. "Englishman, I never loved you; this heart was dead to you, and it will be dead to all else forever. Farewell! You will forget me sooner than you think for--sooner than I shall forget you--as a friend, as a brother--if brothers had natures as tender and as kind as yours! Now, my lord, will you give me your arm? I would join the Count." "Stay--one word, madam," said Frank, very pale, and through his set teeth, but calmly, and with a pride on his brow which had never before dignified its careless, open expression--"one word. I may not be worthy of you in any thing else--but an honest love, that never doubted, never suspected--that would have clung to you though all the world were against; such a love makes the meanest man of worth. One word, frank and open. By all that you hold most sacred in your creed, did you speak the truth when you said that you never loved me?" Beatrice bent down her head; she was abashed before this manly nature that she had so deceived, and perhaps till then undervalued. "Pardon, pardon," she said, in reluctant accents, half-choked by the rising of a sob. At her hesitation Frank's face lighted as if with sudden hope. She raised her eyes, and saw the change in him, then glanced where Leonard stood, mournful and motionless. She shivered, and added, firmly-- "Yes--pardon; for I spoke the truth; and I had no heart to give. It might have been as wax to another--it was of granite to you." She paused, and muttered inly--"Granite, and--broken!"