'But what, Mary love?' 'I am under such supervision--Hew, for instance-- 'It is intolerable!' said Falconer, as a gesture of impatience escaped him. 'To love you, and say that I love you, dearest Mary, means views of marriage, and the hope that you will be mine--mine for ever, sweetest pet,' he continued, with infinite tenderness of tone and manner, taking her little face between his hands, after the mode of the pictured Huguenot; but Mary partially and nervously withdrew from him. 'You are free, Mary, are you not?' he asked, with great and sudden anxiety. There was no answer, and she seemed intently studying the pattern of the carpet. 'You are not, you cannot be, engaged?' he exclaimed in a low and earnest voice, and dreading some change since they parted. 'No, certainly--not of my own free will,' was her curious reply, while tears trembled on her dark lashes. 'How then?' 'Mrs. Garth told you all, did she not?' 'Do you know your own mind, Mary?' he asked, taking her caressingly in his arms. 'Yes,' said she, with a sob in her throat. 'How is it to be, then?' There was no answer. 'Mary!' She could scarcely have made any reply just then, as Cecil closed her sweet lips most effectually. 'Hew actually takes his position with me for granted,' said she, after a little pause, with her head reclined on Cecil's shoulder. 'He is absurd, and insolent as a wooer, yet seems to think there is no need for exerting himself to win a bride that is bestowed upon him. He treats me as if I were his property--a gift from Sir Piers in fact,' she continued with an angry little laugh. 'And you, with all your beauty and wealth too, Mary, are to become the sacrifice of an old man's ambition to endow his house, and a young man's avarice! Oh, my darling, it is monstrous! and in this age of the world, ridiculous too! But perhaps the good old general may come round in time, and see the folly of his scheme.' She shook her head, and said brokenly: 'You speak of wealth--I would I were penniless, for your sake; it is as a millstone about my neck; I think papa's will was most iniquitous!' Until Mary Montgomerie met and knew Cecil Falconer, she had lived like the lady of Shalott, in a world of dreams--a young girl's dreams of a lover; for even the advent of Hew as an admirer--an intended--had certainly not embodied the idea to her. She had read in Byron that a woman's love was a woman's whole existence, and such she would have made it now to herself; and doubtless had Cecil chosen to exert the power he had over her heart, and lured her, as one less scrupulous might have done, into risking the _esclandre_, he would have persuaded her to defy Sir Piers and fly with him; but he never for a moment entertained the idea of a measure that would have been such injustice to herself, as it would have involved the loss of her fortune, and perhaps its eventual transference to Hew!