She is now as pale as death. She lifts her hand and lays it impulsively against his lips, as though to prevent his further speech. She is trembling a little (from anger, she tells herself), and her breath is coming quickly and unevenly, so she stands for a moment collecting herself, with her fingers pressed against his lips, and then the agitation dies, and a strange coldness takes its place. "You are sure you love me?" she asks, at length, in a hard, clear voice, so unlike her usual soft tones, that it startles even herself. "My beloved, can't you see it?" he says, with deep emotion. "Very well, then, I will marry you some day. And--and to-morrow--it must be _to-morrow_--you will let Roger know I am engaged to you? You quite understand?" He does, though he will not acknowledge it even to himself. "Dulce, my own soul!" he says, brokenly; and, kneeling on the grass at her feet, he lifts both her hands and presses them passionately to his lips. They are so cold and lifeless that they chill him to his very heart. CHAPTER XVII. "Too early seen unknown, and known too late!" --ROMEO AND JULIET. "There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee." --HENRY IV. IT is next day. There has been rain in the night--_heavy_ rain--and the earth looks soaked and brown and desolate. Great storms, too, had arisen, and scattered the unoffending leaves far and wide, until all the paths are strewn with rustling types of death. Just now the drops are falling, too--not so angrily as at the midnight past, but persistently, and with a miserable obstinacy that defies all hope of sunshine. "The windy night" has made "a rainy morrow," and sorrowful, indeed, is the face of Nature. Sorrowful, too, is the household. A lack of geniality pervades it from garret to basement; no one seems quite to know what is the matter, but "_suspect_" that "crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air" stalks rampant up stairs and down, and damps the ardor of everyone. Dulce had waked early, had risen from her bed, and--with the curious feeling full upon her of one who breaks her slumber _knowingly_ that some grief had happened to her over night, the remembrance of which eludes her in a tantalizing fashion--had thrown wide her window, and gazed with troubled eyes upon the dawning world. Then knowledge came to her, and the thought that she had made a new contract that must influence all her life, and with this knowledge a sinking of the heart, but no drawing back and no repentance. She dressed herself; she knelt down and said her prayers, but peace did not come to her, or rest or comfort of any sort, only an unholy feeling of revenge, and an angry satisfaction that should not have found a home in her gentle breast.