“They have both spoken to me.”

“I thought it best that they should have the opportunity of doing so.  In our country these things are arranged chiefly by the lady’s friends.  With your people I know it is different.  Perhaps it is much better that it should be so in a matter in which the heart has to be concerned.”

“It would come to the same thing with me.  I must decide for myself.”

“I am sure of it.  May I venture to feel a hope that ultimately that decision may not go against me?” M. Grascour, as he said this, did throw some look of passion into his face.  “But I have spoken nothing as yet of my own feelings.”

“It is unnecessary.”

This might be taken in either one of two senses; but the gentleman was not sufficiently vain to think that the lady had intended to signify to him that she would accept his love as a thing of which she could have no doubt.  “Ah, Miss Mountjoy,” he continued, “if you would allow me to say that since you have been at Brussels not a day has passed in which mingled love and respect have not grown within my bosom.  I have sat by and watched while my excellent young friend Mr. Anderson has endeavored to express his feelings.  I have said to myself that I would bide my time.  If you could give yourself to him, why then the aspiration should be quenched within my own breast.  But you have not done so, though, as I am aware, he has been assisted by my friend Sir Magnus.  I have seen, and have heard, and have said to myself at last, ’Now, too, my turn may come.’  I have loved much, but I have been very patient.  Can it be that my turn should have come at last?” Though he had spoken of Mr. Anderson, he had not thought it expedient to say a word either of Captain Scarborough or of Mr. Annesley.  He knew quite as much of them as he did of Mr. Anderson.  He was clever, and had put together with absolute correctness what Mrs. Mountjoy had told him, with other little facts which had reached his ears.

“M.  Grascour, I suppose I am very much obliged to you.  I ought to be.”  Here he bowed his head.  “But my only way of being grateful is to tell you the truth.”  Again he bowed his head.  “I am in love with another man.  That’s the truth.”  Here he shook his head with the smallest possible shake, as though deprecating her love, but not doing so with any harshness.  “I engaged to marry him, too.”  There was another shake of the head, somewhat more powerful.  “And I intend to marry him.”  This she said with much bold assurance.  “All my old friends know that it is so, and ought not to have sent you to me.  I have given a promise to Harry Annesley, and Harry Annesley alone can make me depart from it.”  This she said in a low voice, but almost with violence, because there had come another shake of the head in reply to her assurance that she meant to marry Annesley.  “And though he were to make me depart from it,—­which he will never do,—­I should be just the same as regards anybody else.  Can’t you understand that when a girl has given herself, heart and soul, to a man, she won’t change?”