"I see nothing but you, Lavinia," he said, vehemently; "I hear no voice but yours, I breathe no air but your breath, I have no emotion except that of feeling that you are near me. Do you know that I love you madly? Yes, you know it; you must have seen it to-day, and perhaps you wanted it to be so. Very well! if that is so, enjoy your triumph. I am at your feet, I ask you to forgive me and to forget the past,--I ask it with my face in the dust; I ask you to give me the future, oh! I ask it with passionate fervor, and you must grant my request, Lavinia; for I want you with all my heart, and I have rights over you----" "Rights?" she repeated, withdrawing her hand. "Does not the wrong I did you give me a right, a ghastly right, Lavinia? And if you allowed me to assume it in order to ruin your life, can you take it from me to-day, when I seek to claim it anew and to repair my crimes?" We know all that a man can say under such circumstances. Lionel was more eloquent than I should have been in his place. He became strangely excited; and, despairing of his ability to overcome Lady Blake's resistance in any other way, seeing, moreover, that by making a less complete submission than his rival he gave him a very valuable advantage, he rose to the same level of devotion: he offered Lavinia his name and his fortune. "Can you dream of such a thing?" she said, with emotion. "You would abandon Miss Ellis, when she is betrothed to you, when your marriage is already appointed?" "I will do it," he replied. "I will do what the world will call insulting and criminal. Perhaps I shall have to atone for it with my blood; but I am ready to do anything to obtain you; for the greatest crime of my life is my failure to appreciate you, and my first duty, to return to you. Oh! speak, Lavinia! give me back the happiness I lost when I lost you. To-day, I shall know how to appreciate and retain it; for I, too, have changed: I am no longer the ambitious, restless man whom an unknown future tormented with its deceitful promises. I know life to-day, I know what the world and its false splendor are worth. I know that not one of my triumphs was worth a single glance from you; and the chimera of happiness I have pursued, has always avoided me until this day, when it leads me back to you. Oh! Lavinia, do you, too, come back to me! Who will love you as I will? who will see, as I see, the grandeur, patience, and pity that your heart contains?" Lavinia did not speak, but her heart beat with a violence which Lionel detected. Her hand trembled in his, and she did not try to withdraw it, nor a lock of hair which the wind had loosened and which Lionel covered with kisses. They did not feel the rain, which was falling in large but infrequent drops. The wind had diminished, the sky became somewhat lighter, and the Comte de Morangy came toward them as quickly as his lame and shoeless horse, which had nearly killed him by falling over a rock, could bring him.