"Adeline--if you are indeed in full possession of your senses--explain what you would say. I do not understand." "It is easy enough to be understood," she replied, leaning against the side of the large window for support. "On Saturday, their fixed wedding-day, I shall marry him." "Oh, this is shameful! this is dreadful!" he exclaimed. "How can they have tampered with you like this?" "They have not tampered with me, Frederick. I decide of my own will." "It is disgraceful! disgraceful!" he uttered. "Where is Signor de Castella? I will tell him what I think of his conduct. _He_ talk of honour!" She placed her hand upon his arm to detain him, for he was turning from the room. "He can tell you nothing," she said. "He does not yet know my decision. Do not blame him." "He said last night that you should be free to choose," impatiently returned Mr. St. John. "And I am free. He--laid"--(she hardly knew how to frame her words and yet respect her oath)--"he laid the case fully before me, and left me to decide for myself. Had I chosen you, he said my Aunt Agnes should accompany us today to England, and see me married. But--I--dared not--I"--(she burst into a flood of most distressing tears)--"I must marry de la Chasse." "Explain, explain." He was getting hot and angry. "I have nothing to explain. Only that my father left it to me, and that I must marry him: and that my heart will break." When he perfectly understood her, understood that there was no hope, the burst of reproach that came from him was terrible. Yet might it not be excused? He had parted from her on the previous night in the full expectation that she would be his wife: now could he think otherwise after all that had occurred, and the concluding promise of M. de Castella? Yet now, without preface, without reason, she told him that she renounced him for his rival. A reason, unhappily, she dared not give. Oh, once more, in spite of her resistance, Mr. St. John held her to his heart. He spoke to her words of the sweetest and most persuasive eloquence; he besought her to fly with him, to become his beloved wife. And she was obliged to wrest herself from him, and assure him that his prayers were wasted; that she was compelled to be more obdurate than even her father had been. It was a fault, you know, of Mr. St. John's to be hasty and passionate, when moved to it by any great cause; but perhaps a storm of passion so violent as that he gave way to now, had never yet shaken him. His reproaches were keen: entirely unreasonable: but an angry man does not weigh his words. "False and fickle that you are, you have never loved me! I see it all now. You have but led me on, to increase at the last moment the triumph of de la Chasse. It may have been a planned thing between you! Your true vows have been given to him, your false ones to me." Adeline placed her hands on his, as if imploring mercy, and would have knelt before him; but he held her up, not tenderly.