"Proceed," said he, "I can divine what your honour, or your delicacy inclines you to conceal. She played upon your open nature, to make you believe she loved you so passionately, she could not await your time of drawing the secret from her! I know the sex, Louis. For more than thirty years, I have been an object of their various practices. And, once for all, you may receive it as an unerring rule, that, when a woman runs before a man in the profession of her love, her love is nothing more than profession. Her views are something baser." Ripperda pursued the subject; and Louis was, at last, brought to acknowledge, that the Countess had given him reason to believe that she loved him devotedly,--too devotedly; and then, without with-holding a circumstance, he related the whole affair, from the commencement of their acquaintance, till the moment when he wished to close it for ever. But, he confessed that what had happened in the music-room, had roused all within him to rebellion, though his judgement was as stern as ever against the pleadings of his infatuated senses. "Oh, Sir!" cried he, "I love, and I despise her. And yet, when I stood over her insensible form, which had become so, from the wound I had inflicted, I could not but ask myself,--Am I a god, that I should thus ruthlessly condemn human error, and break the heart that loves me?" The Duke was a long time silent, after his son had ceased speaking. Then looking up, he abruptly said, "Louis de Montemar, you are the first man of your sort, with whom I ever came in contact. I see of what spirit you are; but it will not do in the station you fill, or in the times in which we live. The world is always changing, and you must go with it, or it will leave you. I ought not to have left you so long at Lindisfarne!" Louis turned his eye on his father.