Was it that grief, forced into an excitement foreign to its lonely, self-indulgent nature, wooed the evening air, to cool by the open window the fever of her slow-throbbing veins? Certain it is at least that Marjory Bower expected no salutation from without at that hour. "Sweet Marjory, will you listen to one who once dared to love you, and who has now sorrow at his heart, yet Heaven's wrath will not send forth lightnings to kill?" "What terrible words are these?" replied the maiden, as she took her hand from her brow and looked in the direction of the open casement. "Not those," replied he, "which are winged with the hope of a bridegroom. But I am miserable! Marjory Bower, I loved you, and you returned my love; I deserted you, and you never even gloomed on me; and I am now the bridegroom of your sister,--ay, your sister, Devil Isobel! Will you give me hope if I break off this marriage?" "Nay," rejoined she; "that cannot be. You have gone too far to go back with honour." "Or forward with any hope of happiness," said he. "But I will brave all your father's anger, Isobel's revenge, and my loss of honour, if you will consent to be mine within a year." "Nay," repeated the maid with a sigh. "Out of my unhappiness may come the happiness of others. Though I may not live to see it, I may die in the hope that Isobel Bower may, in your keeping, come to deserve a name better than that terrible one she has earned, and which just now sounded so terrible from your lips." "Is she not a liar, who falsified my words?" said he impassionedly. "Is she not a thief, who appropriated the diamond gift of my mother, intended for you? Is she not an undutiful daughter, who first deceived her mother by a falsehood, and then denounced her as herself false? Is that woman, with the form of an angel and the heart of a devil, to be my wife? And does Marjory Bower counsel it? Then Marjory Bower hates Hector Ogilvy!" "Nay," replied she calmly, "I only love your honour. Night and day I will pray for a blessing on your marriage, and that God, who made the heart of my sister, may change it into love and goodness." A repressed spasmodic laugh shook the frame of the youth. "What a hope," he said, "on which to found the happiness of a life, and for which to barter such a creature as you! But, Marjory, you have roused the pride of my honour, while you have appeased my remorse; and I will marry Isobel because you have said that I should. It is thus I shall punish myself by becoming a victim in turn to the honour I was false to."