While she spoke, the blushes which had deserted her cheek were transferred to that of Hargrave; for though, to his own conscience, he had palliated his former outrage till it appeared a very venial trespass, he was not proof against the unaffected horror with which it had inspired the virtuous Laura. Throwing himself at her feet, and hiding his face in her gown, he bitterly, and for the moment sincerely, bewailed his offence, and vowed to devote his life to its expiation. Then, starting up, he struck his hand wildly upon his forehead, and exclaimed, 'Madman that I have been! Oh, Laura, thy heavenly purity makes me the veriest wretch. No--thou canst never pardon me!' The innocent Laura, who little suspected all his causes of self-reproach, wept tears of joy over his repentance, and, in a voice full of tenderness, said, 'Indeed I have myself too many faults to be unrelenting. Contrition and amendment are all that Heaven requires--why should I ask more?' Hargrave saw that she attributed all his agitation to remorse for his conduct towards herself; but the effects of her mistake were too delightful to suffer him to undeceive her; and perceiving at once that he had found the master-spring of all her tenderness, he overpowered her with such vows, protestations, and entreaties, that, before their conference was interrupted, he had, amidst tremors, blushes, and hesitation, which spoke a thousand times more than her words, wrung from her a confession that she felt a more than friendly interest in the issue of his probation. Indeed Montreville was in no haste to break in upon their dialogue. That any woman should have refused the hand of the handsome--the insinuating--the gallant Colonel Hargrave, had always appeared to him little less than miraculous. He had been told, that ladies sometimes rejected what they did not mean to relinquish; and though he could scarcely believe his daughter capable of such childish coquetry, he was not without faith in a maxim, which, it must be confessed, receives sanction from experience, namely, that in all cases of feminine obduracy, perseverance is an infallible recipé. This recipé, he had no doubt, was now to be tried upon Laura; and he fervently wished that it might be with success. Though he was too affectionate a father to form on this subject a wish at variance with his daughter's happiness, he had never been insensible to the desire of seeing her brow graced by a coronet. But now more important considerations made him truly anxious to consign her to the guardianship of a man of honour.