This construction of her tender penitence--this explanation of his bitter scorn--took Caroline Montfort wholly by surprise. From what writhing agonies of lacerated self-love came that pride which was but self- depreciation? It was a glimpse into the deeper rents of his charred and desolate being which increased at once her yearning affection and her passionate despair. Vainly she tried to utter the feelings that crowded upon her!--vainly, vainly! Woman can murmur, "I have injured you-- forgive!" when she cannot exclaim, "You disdain me, but love!" Vainly, vainly her bosom heaved and her lips moved under the awe of his flashing eyes and the grandeur of his indignant frown. "Ah!" he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts with a sombre intensity of passion that rendered him almost unconscious of her presence--"Ah! I said to myself, 'Oh, she believes that she has been so mourned and missed that my soul would spring back to her false smile; that I could be so base a slave to my senses as to pardon the traitress because her face was fair enough to haunt my dreams. She dupes herself; she is no necessity to my existence--I have wrenched it from her power years, long years ago! I will show her, since again she deigns to remember me, that I am not so old as to be grateful for the leavings of a heart. "I will love another--I will be beloved. She shall not say with secret triumph, 'The old man dotes in rejecting me'" "Darrell, Darrel--unjus--cruel kill me rather than talk thus!" He heeded not her cry. His words rolled on in that wonderful, varying music which, whether in tenderness or in wrath, gave to his voice a magical power--fascinating, hushing, overmastering human souls.