"I--I--I beg your pardon, sir--I misunderstood you," said Kate, discovering her error, and coloring violently--"but it is even more painful to me to listen to the language you are addressing to me. Since you urge me to it, I beg you to understand, sir, that if by what you have been saying to me, I am to gather that you are making me an offer of your addresses--I decline them at once, most peremptorily, as a thing quite out of the question." The tone and manner in which this was said--the determination and hauteur perceptible in her striking and expressive features--blighted all the nascent hopes of Gammon; who turned perfectly pale, and looked the very image of misery and despair. The workings of his strongly marked features told of the agony of his feelings. Neither he nor Miss Aubrey spoke for a few moments. "Alas! madam," at length he inquired in a tremulous voice, "am I presumptuous, if I intimate a fear--which I dare hardly own to myself even--that I am too late--that there _is some more fortunate_"----Miss Aubrey blushed scarlet. "Sir," said she, with quick indignant energy, "_I should_ certainly consider such inquiries--most--_presumptuous_--most offensive--most unwarrantable!"--and indeed her eye quite shone with indignation. Gammon gazed at her with piercing intensity, and spoke not. "You cannot but be aware, sir, that you are greatly taxing my forbearance--nay, sir, I feel that you are taking a very great liberty in making any such inquiries or suggestions," continued Miss Aubrey, proudly, but more calmly; "but, as your manner is unobjectionable and respectful, I have no difficulty in saying, sir, most unhesitatingly, that the reason you hint at, is not in the least concerned in the answer I have given. I have declined your proposals, sir, simply because I _choose_ to decline them--because I have not, nor ever could have, the least disposition to entertain them." Gammon could not, at the moment, determine whether she really had or had not a pre-engagement. "Madam, you would bear with me did you but know the exquisite suffering your words occasion me! Your hopeless tone and manner appear to my soul to consign it to perdition--to render me perfectly careless about life," said Gammon, with irresistible pathos; and Miss Aubrey, as she looked and listened, in spite of herself pitied him. "I might, perhaps, establish _some_ claim to your favor, were I at liberty to recount to you my long unwearied exertions to shield your noble-spirited brother--nay, all of you--from impending trouble and danger--to avert it from you." "We are indeed deeply sensible of your kindness towards us, Mr. Gammon," replied Miss Aubrey, with her usual sweetness and fascinating frankness of manner which _now_ he could not bear to behold.