“The next day we all returned to Berne in company—you, at my father’s invitation, taking a seat in our carriage. “At the Bernerhof Hotel we stopped but one night. There you found and presented your letter—to prove that you were no impostor, you said. You joined our company and traveled where we traveled, and stopped where we stopped. “Why should I repeat this to you, you know it already? “Only because it is a visible link in the chain of our destiny. “That long summer, Abel, we spent together! That long summer, every day of which drew our hearts nearer and nearer! Even my father, who was ever most reserved to all but oldest friends and nearest kin, came to love you like a son. “I—feeling then, for the first time, all the bitter significance of my own antecedents—resisted the sweet influence that was flowing into my soul, yet—resisted it in vain! “You know how silently our love grew, during those delightful weeks and months we lived and traveled together. “I knew then, though we might never marry in this world, even as I know now—though this confession may part us for this earth—that we are mates for all eternity. “There came a day, at last, when we were all in the ancient city of Grenada, that you went to my father and asked his consent to win me for your wife. He told you that he would have a talk with me first, and then give you an answer. “My father came to me and told me all that had passed between himself and you, and of your proposal for my hand, and he asked me how I felt disposed toward ‘Mr. Force.’ “Oh! the bitter sweet of that moment. “I told my father I felt so well disposed toward you, that but for my past calamity and its living evidence I should accept your hand. “Oh, Abel! my answer did not express the hundredth part of the love, the joy and the sorrow that strove in my heart at the time; but I had to control myself and speak quietly, almost indifferently, in the presence of my father. “He replied by assuring me that he should approve my marriage with Mr. Force; that as for my calamity, it was no crime, no fault of mine, but the result of circumstances—that I was so perfectly and unquestionably innocent that I might tell the whole story to Mr. Force without losing a degree of his love and esteem. “At that I became very much alarmed. I declared to my father that I should die on the spot if ever my suitor should be told the story of my humiliation; for under such circumstances I could not look him in the face and live. “My father attempted to argue with me, to call me morbid, my thoughts and feelings extravagant, exaggerated; but the violence of my agitation bore him down and silenced him at last. “‘What am I to say to Force?’ he inquired. “‘Tell him anything you like—except the story of my fall—or that I can accept his suit.’ “‘You refuse him, then?’ “‘I must.’ “My father left me. “I kept my room the whole of that day.