“Oh, my cousin!” she sighed, and stopped there.

Coronado drew courage from the kindly title of relationship, and, leaning gently towards her, attempted to take her hand.  It was a mistake; she was strangely shocked by his touch; she perceived that she did not like him, and she drew away from him.

“Thank you for that word,” he whispered.  “Is it the kindest that you can give me?  Is there—?”

“Coronado!” she interrupted.  “This is all an error.  See here.  I am not an independent creature.  I am a young girl.  I owe some duty somewhere.  My father and mother are gone, but I have a grandfather.  Coronado, he is the head of my family, and I ought not to marry without his permission.  Why can you not wait until we are with Munoz?”

There she suddenly dropped her head between the palms of her hands.  It struck her that she was hypocritical; that even with the consent of Munoz she would not marry Coronado; that it was her duty to tell him so.

“My cousin, I have not told the whole truth,” she added, after a terrible struggle.  “I would not marry any one without first laying the case before my grandfather.  But that is not all.  Coronado, I cannot—­no, I cannot marry you.”

The man without a conscience, the man who was capable of planning and ordering murder, turned pale under this announcement.

Notwithstanding its commonness, notwithstanding that it has been described until the subject is hackneyed, notwithstanding that it has become a laughing-stock for many, even including poets and novelists, there is probably no heart-pain keener than disappointment in love.  The shock of it is like a deep stab; it not merely tortures, but it instantly sickens; the anguish is much, but the sense of helplessness is more; the lover who is refused feels not unlike the soldier who is wounded to death.

This sorrow compares in dignity and terror with the most sublime sorrows of which humanity is capable.  The death of a parent or child, though rendered more imposing to the spectator by the ceremonies of the sepulchre, does not chill the heart more deeply than the death of love.  It lasts also; many a human being has carried the marks of it for life; and surely duration of effect is proof of power.  We are serious in making these declarations, strange as they may seem to a satirical age.  What we have said is strictly true, notwithstanding the mockery of those who have never loved, or the incredulity of those who, having loved, have never lost.  But probably only the wretchedly initiated will believe.

Coronado, though selfish, infamous, and atrocious, was so far susceptible of affection that he was susceptible of suffering.  The simple fact of pallor in that hardened face was sufficient proof of torture.

However, it stood him in hand to recover his self-possession and plead his suit.  There was too much at stake in this cause for him to let it go without a struggle and a vehement one.  Although he had seen at once that the girl was in earnest, he tried to believe that she was not so, and that he could move her.