"This is strange--this is unaccountable!" and he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to make sure he was awake. "Have I done anything to change your opinion of me? I am not aware of having been wanting in any way--and I am sure, Blanche, I have loved you truly and sincerely." A tear glistened in his eye. "Tell me what I have done, and I will correct my fault. You are only saying this to try me; and if so, let me tell you that it is a very foolish jest, and one entirely unworthy of you." The colour mounted into his face, and he looked for a moment extremely angry. "No! Lord Glenrith, this is no jest! I am in sober, serious, most sad earnest. Your conduct towards me has been from the beginning ten thousand times better than I deserved; but I should be treating you shamefully if I were to marry you when my heart--is another's." "Your heart another's! Did you say so? Your heart another's! Then why, on earth, did you accept me?" "Well may you ask that question, and well may I blush to answer it! I thought my affection was unrequited, and I esteemed you. My parents thought more highly of you than of any one. I believed I should soon prefer you to the one person I had loved, as much as I already did to all common acquaintances; and it was not till I found my affection was not unrequited, that I became aware of the depth and strength of my own attachment. I have been miserable ever since, and all I can now do is to tell you the honest truth." Lord Glenrith sat with his eyes fixed on the ground. "This is a cruel blow!" he said at last; "I have not deserved this from you, Lady Blanche. And who is the favoured object? By heaven, it must be De Molton! I remember his countenance at dinner the day he was at Cransley--how pale he looked, and how continually he strove to catch a view of you by the épergne; and every time he met my eye, he looked in another direction! I am born to be made a fool of--to be deceived by the friend I have loved from childhood, and by the woman to whom I would fain have devoted all the rest of my existence!" He hid his face in his hands. "Blame me, Lord Glenrith, for I deserve your reproaches; but your friend has never deceived you: Captain De Molton has always considered you more than himself." "Then it is De Molton! These are the actions dictated by his high-flown notions of honour! A plain, matter-of-fact man would never have proved such a shabby fellow!" "Captain De Molton shabby!" The word "shabby" sounded strangely on her ear when coupled with the name of De Molton. She would have answered Lord Glenrith angrily, if the consciousness of how deeply she had wronged him had not checked her speech; but she could rather have forgiven his calling her lover a black-hearted villain, than a "shabby fellow."--"Lord Glenrith," she repeated, "you wrong your friend. He carefully concealed from me his feelings till--till----" "Till you had promised to marry me!"