“Your hesitation confirms me in my opinion, and now I recall to mind (as she spoke, her heart beat almost audibly, and the eloquent blood mantled her very brows, at the outrage she forced herself to inflict upon her maiden modesty), that some weeks ago, long before this present business occupied your thoughts, when I asked you if you were ill, you replied, that you were ‘ill in mind, and harassed, because you could not determine to pursue a certain line of conduct you were anxious to adopt, lest in the attempt to acquire your own individual happiness, which you confessed to be at stake, you should injure another person;’—perhaps you are still undecided?” Again she paused, but not as before, overpowered by the struggle within her breast. The Rubicon was passed, and—she sat before Warenne, calm and pale, with her head proudly thrown back, and her dark eye glancing with the consciousness of single-minded innocence, as though she dared the world to look into her heart, or question its purity. He turned a wondering and admiring gaze upon the beautiful being who thus questioned him, as it were with authority, and answered slowly, “No, I have no indecision now to torture me; my path is clear before me, and a joyless one it is.” “I had guessed as much,” resumed Adelaide, “from your compressed lips, and sterner manner, even had you not acknowledged it. Am I equally right in my further surmise that you have decided against yourself, and that, not because you are convinced of its being your duty so to do under the circumstances of the case, but because the circumstances themselves have changed—because, though the benefit to yourself, in the world’s opinion at least, may be greater, you consider that you have less right to ask it of the person?” Warenne interposed. “Miss Marston, you cannot know—you cannot understand—yet you assuredly speak the truth.” Adelaide continued. “Have you forgotten your conversation with me the last time we met? Might not that help me to read the riddle of your thoughts? and now (a deep blush again resuming the empire of her cheek, as she in a clear low tone, but with rapid utterance, made the demand)—that person, is it not myself?—that purpose, was it not to ask my hand?”