“How, think you, did your good father earn his title and the rich governorship of Morlaix? What great deeds were rewarded to La Rochederrien by his marquisate, and this captaincy of musquetaires. You know not yet, young lady, what virtue there is now-a-days in being the accommodating father, or the convenient husband of a beauty!” “You speak harshly, St. Renan, and bitterly.” “And if I do, have I not cause enough for bitterness and harshness?” he replied almost angrily. “Not against me, Raoul.” “I am not bitter against you, Melanie. And yet--and yet--” “And yet _what_, Raoul?” “And yet had you resisted three days longer, we might have been saved--you might have been mine--” “I am yours, Raoul de St. Renan. Yours, ever and for ever! No one’s but only yours.” “You speak but madness--your vow--the sacrament!” “To the winds with my vow--to the abyss with the fraudful sacrament!” she cried, almost fiercely. “By sin it was obtained and sanctioned--in sin let it perish. I say--I swear, Raoul, if you will take me, I am yours.” “Mine? Mine?” cried the young man, half bewildered. “How mine, and when?” “Thus,” she replied, casting herself upon his breast, and winding her arms around his neck, and kissing his lips passionately and often. “Thus, Raoul, thus, and now!” He returned her embrace fondly once, but the next instant he removed her almost forcibly from his breast, and held her at arm’s length. “No, no!” he exclaimed, “not thus, not thus! If at all, honestly, openly, holily, in the face of day! May my soul perish, ere cause come through me why you should ever blush to show your front aloft among the purest and the proudest. No, no, not thus, my own Melanie!” The girl burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing, through which she hardly could contrive to make her interrupted and faltering words audible. “If not now,” she said at length, “it will never be. For, hear me, Raoul, and pity me, to-morrow they are about to drag me to Paris.” The lover mused for several moments very deeply, and then replied, “Listen to me, Melanie. If you are in earnest, if you are true, and can be firm, there may yet be happiness in store for us, and that very shortly.” “Do you doubt me, Raoul?” “I do not doubt you, Melanie. But ever as in my own wildest rapture, even to gain my own extremest bliss, I would not do aught that could possibly cast one shadow on your pure renown, so, mark me, would I not take you to my heart were there one spot, though it were but as a speck in the all-glorious sun, upon the brightness of your purity.” “I believe you, Raoul. I feel, I know that my honor, that my purity is all in all to you.” “I would die a thousand deaths,” he made answer, “ere even a false report should fall on it, to mar its virgin whiteness. Marvel not then that I ask as much of you.” “Ask anything, St. Renan. It _is_ granted.”