He was about to carry Georgiana to a chair, but she suddenly regained her strength. “Deliver you up!” she said, excitedly. “My uncle shall not! You shall put it out of his power! Escape now, while you may! Go—we’ll meet again.” She essayed to push him toward the hall, keeping her glance the while on the drawing-room door by which her uncle might enter. “I cannot,” said Everell. “I’ve given him my word—’twas to purchase this week of love, sweet.” “Your word! He shall not claim it of you! Your word!—oh, heaven help me, you would keep your word though it broke my heart!—honour, you call it!—’tis men’s madness, women are no such fools!—Nay, forgive me, I would not love you else. But he shall not hold you to your word. He shall not deliver you up. He shall release you.” She broke from Everell’s clasp, and flung open the drawing-room door, calling, “Uncle! Uncle!” Foxwell appeared, with some playing cards in his hand. He was slightly pallid, and wore the frown of one to whom has fallen a vexation he has dreaded. “Uncle, you will not deliver him up? You will release him from his word? You will let him go free, will you not? ’Tis no gain to you that he should die. Speak!—uncle, tell me you’ll not deliver him up.” “My child, you do not understand these matters,” replied Foxwell, patiently resorting to a judicial softness of speech. “Mr. Everell himself, as a soldier, who assumed the chance of war and lost, knows what my duty is—knows I once even offered to forget that duty, had he but accepted the condition.” “Certainly I have but myself to blame,” said Everell. “For myself I make no complaint. For her, alas! my heart bleeds. I can but pray she will soon forget.” “Forget!” cried Georgiana. “Indeed, no! I say you shall not die, Everell. Uncle, I beg you, on my knees—his life! Sure you can’t be my kinsman and refuse—you can’t be a sharer of the same blood as flows in me, and be so cruel. Answer me, uncle!—you will spare him, will not you? You say you once offered to forget your duty: if you could forget it once, you can again, cannot you?” [Illustration: “‘UNCLE, I BEG YOU, ON MY KNEES—HIS LIFE!’”] “Nay, ’tis not possible now, niece; circumstances have altered. ’Twould be useless for me to explain. I can only beg you to end this supplication, Georgiana,—it will not serve you. I am not to be moved. Mr. Everell will say whether I have dealt fairly with him—would have dealt more than fairly, had he but willed. ’Tis all vastly to be regretted. Had he chosen so a week since, your sorrow had been much less. Had you bestowed your confidence upon me when he first came here, you might have been spared all sorrow. As it is, events must take their course.”