"Have I not solemnly assured you that I never loved till I knew you—and shall never, never love again!" she added, with a convulsive sob, as if her heart were breaking. "But perhaps you were betrothed to another in your youth:—peradventure that _other_ has some sacred pledge—some irrevocable bond——" "No—no: I am my own mistress—none can control me!" interrupted Georgiana, her nervous state of excitement growing each moment more painful. "And your uncle—your friends—your advisers?" said the Earl,—"it is possible that _they_ have become acquainted with my attachment towards you—that _they_ have some motive to counsel you against my suit?" "On the contrary——But, my God! do not question me thus!" almost shrieked the unhappy lady. "I shall go mad—I shall go mad!" "Oh! there is some dreadful mystery in all this!" cried the Earl; "and I too shall go mad if it be not explained! Merciful heavens! a terrible suspicion flashes across my mind. And yet—no—no, it cannot be,—for you declare that you never loved another! Still—still, what motive, save _that_, can render you thus resolute not to become mine? Georgiana," he said, sinking his voice to a low tone, and speaking with a solemn seriousness which had something even awful in its effect,—"Georgiana, I conjure you to answer me,—_me_, who am your devoted lover and your sincerest friend,—as you would reply to your God! Say—if in your giddy and inexperienced girlhood—ignorant through extreme innocence of the snare spread for you—and in a moment of weakness—you——" "Just heavens! that you should suppose me criminal—guilty!" shrieked Georgiana, covering her face with her hands. "Pardon—pardon!" cried the Earl, again falling on his knees at the feet of her whom he adored; and, forcibly possessing himself of one of her hands, he conveyed it to his lips. "Pardon me for the outrageous idea that I dared to express—forgive the insulting suspicion which for a moment occupied my mind! Alas! alas! that I should have provoked the look of indignation which you ere now cast upon me, when I withdrew your hand from before your eyes! But, ah—now you smile—and I am forgiven!" Georgiana _did_ smile—but in a manner so plaintively melancholy, that, although it implied forgiveness for the injurious suspicion, it still conveyed no hope! There was a long and mournful pause. The Earl of Ellingham burned to penetrate the deep mystery in which the conduct of Lady Hatfield was shrouded; and yet he knew not what other hypothesis to suggest. He had no rival in her affections—her friends offered no objection to his suit—she was under no pledge to bestow her hand upon any particular individual—and the evanescent suspicion that she might have once been frail and was too honourable to bring a polluted person to the marriage-bed, had been banished beyond the possibility of return:—what, then, could influence her conduct?