As if a thunderbolt had fallen, Mary and her mother listened to these terrible words, and scarcely had the latter sufficient courage to inform her unpitying husband of their child's engagement with Herbert Hamilton. For Mary's sake, she struggled and spoke, but her fears were not without foundation. A horrid imprecation on Mr. Hamilton and his family burst instantly from the lips of the now infuriated Greville; he had chosen for many years to fancy himself deeply injured by that gentleman, and, with an oath too fearful to be written, he solemnly swore that Mary should never be the wife of Herbert; he would rather see her dead. Louder and louder grew his passion, but Mrs. Greville heard him not. Mary had dropped as if lifeless at his feet. She had sprung up as if to arrest the imprecation on her father's lips, but when his dreadful oath reached her ears, her senses happily forsook her, and it was long, very long before she woke to consciousness and thought. Mrs. Greville hung in agony over the couch of her unhappy child; scarcely could she pray or wish for her recovery, for she knew there was no hope. Her husband had let fall hints of being so deeply pledged to Dupont, that his liberty or perhaps his life depended on his union with Mary, and could she wish her child to live to be the wife of such a man, yet could she see her die? What pen can describe the anguish of that fond mother, as for weeks she watched and tended her senseless child, or the contending feelings that wrung her heart when Mary woke again to consciousness and misery, and asked her, in a voice almost inarticulate from weakness, what had happened--why she was thus? Truth gradually broke upon her mind, and Mary too soon remembered all. The physician said she was recovering, that she would quickly be enabled to leave her bed and go about as usual. Greville swore he would no longer be prevented seeing her, and Mary made no opposition to his entrance. Calmly and passively she heard all he had to say; what he told her then she did not repeat in writing to Herbert. She merely said that she had implored him to wait till her health was a little more restored; not to force her to become the wife of Dupont, till she could stand _without support_ beside the altar, and he had consented.