"If I thought you did not know your words are untrue, it would kill me," she faltered. "Had we been married, as, until this day, I thought and prayed we should be, you would have known how entirely I love you; how the love will endure unto death. I can tell you this, now, because we are about to separate, and it is the last time we must ever be together in this world. Oh, Frederick! mercy! mercy!--do not profess to think I have loved another." "You are about to marry him." "I shall marry him, _hating_ him; I shall marry him, loving _you_; do you not think I have enough of misery?" "As I am a living man," spoke Mr. St. John, "I cannot understand this! You say your father told you to choose between us?" "I feel as if I should die," she murmured; "I have felt so, at times, for several weeks past. There is something hanging over me, I think," she continued, passing her hand across her forehead, abstractedly. "Adeline," he impatiently repeated, "are you deceiving me? _Did_ your father give you free liberty to choose between us?" "Yes; he gave it me--after placing the whole case before me," she was obliged to answer. "And you tell me that you have deliberately chosen de la Chasse? You give me no explanation; but cast me off like this?" "I dare not give it. That is"--striving to soften the words that were wrung from her--"I have no explanation to give. Oh, Frederick, _dearest_ Frederick--let me call you so in your presence, for the first and last and only time--do not reproach me? Indeed, I must marry him." "Of your own free deliberation, you will, on Saturday next, walk to the altar and become his wife?" he reiterated. "Do you mean to tell me that?" She made a gesture in the affirmative, her sobs rising hysterically. What with her confused state of feeling, and the anxiety she was under to preserve inviolate the obligation so solemnly undertaken, she was perhaps even less explanatory than she might have been. But who, in these moments of agitation, can act precisely as he ought? "Fie upon you! fie upon you!" he cried, contemptuously. "_You_ boast of loving! you may well do so, when you had two lovers to practise upon. I understand it all, now; your objection to my speaking, until the last moment, to M. de Castella; you would keep us both in your train, forsooth, incense to your vanity! You have but fooled me by pretending to listen to my love; you have led me on, and played with me, a slave to be sacrificed on _his_ shrine! I give you up to him joyfully. I am well quit of you. "Mercy! mercy!" she implored, shrinking down, and clasping her hands together.