"And will you condemn forever because of a few words spoken in a moment of despair and terrible disappointment?" pleads he. "I acknowledge my fault. I was wrong; I was too hasty. I behaved like a brute, if you will; but then I believed I had grounds for fear. When once I saw your face, heard your voice, looked into your eyes, I knew how false my accusations were; but it was then too late." "Too late, indeed." "How calmly you can say it!" with exquisite reproach. "Have five minutes blotted out five months? Did you know all the anguish I endured on seeing you with--Shadwell--I think you might forgive." "I might. But I could not forget. Would I again consent to be at the mercy of one who without a question pronounced me guilty? A thousand times no!" "Say at once you are glad to be rid of me," breaks he in bitterly, stung by her persistent coldness. "You are forgetting your original purpose," she says, after a slight pause, declining to notice his last remark. "Was there not something you wished to say to me?" "Yes." Rousing himself with an impatient sigh. "Molly," blanching a little, and trying to read her face, with all his heart in his eyes,--"are you going to marry Shadwell?" Molly colors richly (a rare thing with her), grows pale again, clasps and unclasps her slender fingers nervously, before she makes reply. A prompting toward mischief grows within her, together with a sense of anger that he should dare put such a question to her under existing circumstances. "I cannot see by what right you put to me such a question--now," she says, at length, haughtily. "My affairs can no longer concern you." With an offended gleam at him from under her long lashes. "But they do," cries he, hotly, maddened by her blush, which he has attributed jealously to a wrong cause. "How can I see you throwing yourself away upon a _roue_--a blackleg--without uttering a word of warning?" "'A _roue_--a blackleg'? Those are strong terms. What has Captain Shadwell done to deserve them? A blackleg! How?" "Perhaps I go too far when I say that," says Luttrell, wishing with all his heart he knew something vile of Shadwell; "but he has gone as near it as any man well can. You and he cannot have a thought in common. Will you sacrifice your entire life without considering well the consequences?" "He is a gentleman, at all events," says Miss Massereene, slowly, cuttingly. "He never backbites his friends. He is courteous in his manner; and--he knows how to keep--his temper. I do not believe any of your insinuations."