“You do not surely mean it, Angélique!” exclaimed he; “you will not give me death instead of life? You cannot be so false to your own heart, so cruel to mine? See, Angélique! My saintly sister Amélie believed in your love, and sent these flowers to place in your hair when you had consented to be my wife,--her sister; you will not refuse them, Angélique?” He raised his hand to place the garland upon her head, but Angélique turned quickly, and they fell at her feet. “Amélie's gifts are not for me, Le Gardeur--I do not merit them! I confess my fault: I am, I know, false to my own heart, and cruel to yours. Despise me,--kill me for it if you will, Le Gardeur! better you did kill me, perhaps! but I cannot lie to you as I can to other men! Ask me not to change my resolution, for I neither can nor will.” She spoke with impassioned energy, as if fortifying her refusal by the reiteration of it. “It is past comprehension!” was all he could say, bewildered at her words thus dislocated from all their natural sequence of association. “Love me and not marry me!--that means she will marry another!” thought he, with a jealous pang. “Tell me, Angélique,” continued he, after several moments of puzzled silence, “is there some inscrutable reason that makes you keep my love and reject my hand?” “No reason, Le Gardeur! It is mad unreason,--I feel that,--but it is no less true. I love you, but I will not marry you.” She spoke with more resolution now. The first plunge was over, and with it her fear and trembling as she sat on the brink. The iteration drove him beside himself. He seized her hands, and exclaimed with vehemence,--“There is a man--a rival--a more fortunate lover--behind all this, Angélique des Meloises! It is not yourself that speaks, but one that prompts you. You have given your love to another, and discarded me! Is it not so?” “I have neither discarded you, nor loved another,” Angélique equivocated. She played her soul away at this moment with the mental reservation that she had not yet done what she had resolved to do upon the first opportunity--accept the hand of the Intendant Bigot. “It is well for that other man, if there be one!” Le Gardeur rose and walked angrily across the room two or three times. Angélique was playing a game of chess with Satan for her soul, and felt that she was losing it. “There was a Sphinx in olden times,” said he, “that propounded a riddle, and he who failed to solve it had to die. Your riddle will be the death of me, for I cannot solve it, Angélique!” “Do not try to solve it, dear Le Gardeur! Remember that when her riddle was solved the Sphinx threw herself into the sea. I doubt that may be my fate! But you are still my friend, Le Gardeur!” added she, seating herself again by his side, in her old fond, coquettish manner. “See these flowers of Amélie's, which I did not place in my hair; I treasure them in my bosom!” She gathered them up as she spoke, kissed them, and placed them in her bosom.