‘You led me here to listen to a communication which interested me,’ he at length said.  ‘Have I heard it?’

His altered tone, the air of haughtiness which he assumed, were not lost upon Venetia.  She endeavoured to collect herself, but she hesitated to reply.

‘I repeat my inquiry,’ said Cadurcis.  ’Have you brought me here only to inform me that you have a father, and that you adore him, or his picture?’

‘I led you here,’ replied Venetia, in a subdued tone, and looking on the ground, ’to thank you for your love, and to confess to you that I love another.’

‘Love another!’ exclaimed Cadurcis, in a tone of derision.  Simpleton!  The best thing your mother can do is to lock you up in the chamber with the picture that has produced such marvellous effects.’

‘I am no simpleton, Plantagenet,’ rejoined Venetia, quietly, ’but one who is acting as she thinks right; and not only as her mind, but as her heart prompts her.’

They had stopped in the earlier part of this conversation on a little plot of turf surrounded by shrubs; Cadurcis walked up and down this area with angry steps, occasionally glancing at Venetia with a look of mortification and displeasure.

‘I tell you, Venetia,’ he at length said, ’that you are a little fool.  What do you mean by saying that you cannot marry me because you love another?  Is not that other, by your own account, your father?  Love him as much as you like.  Is that to prevent you from loving your husband also?’

‘Plantagenet, you are rude, and unnecessarily so,’ said Venetia.  ’I repeat to you again, and for the last time, that all my heart is my father’s.  It would be wicked in me to marry you, because I cannot love you as a husband should be loved.  I can never love you as I love my father.  However, it is useless to talk upon this subject.  I have not even the power of marrying you if I wished, for I have dedicated myself to my father in the name of God; and I have offered a vow, to be registered in heaven, that thenceforth I would exist only for the purpose of being restored to his heart.’

‘I congratulate you on your parent, Miss Herbert.’

’I feel that I ought to be proud of him, though, alas I can only feel it.  But, whatever your opinion may be of my father, I beg you to remember that you are speaking to his child.’

’I shall state my opinion respecting your father, madam, with the most perfect unreserve, wherever and whenever I choose; quite convinced that, however you esteem that opinion, it will not be widely different from the real sentiments of the only parent whom you ought to respect, and whom you are bound to obey.’

’And I can tell you, sir, that whatever your opinion is on any subject it will never influence mine.  If, indeed, I were the mistress of my own destiny, which I am not, it would have been equally out of my power to have acted as you have so singularly proposed.  I do not wish to marry, and marry I never will; but were it in my power, or in accordance with my wish, to unite my fate for ever with another’s, it should at least be with one to whom I could look up with reverence, and even with admiration.  He should be at least a man, and a great man; one with whose name the world rung; perhaps, like my father, a genius and a poet.’