“You attach too much consequence to mere externals, Claude,” said Evelyn, coldly.  “I trust such fastidious notions may be laid at rest before your marriage, or poor Miriam, with her warm, affectionate, and unsuspicious nature will be the sufferer.  I pity her fate, sincerely.”

“No, Evelyn, you wrong me there; I respect and esteem her far too much ever to wound her feelings.  Against this I shall carefully guard.  My bargain would be broken, otherwise.  It is a clear case of barter and sale, you see.  One’s honor is concerned in keeping such an obligation.  I shall never be ungrateful.”

“You have European ideas, you tell me,” she said, bitterly; “is this one of them?”

“It is, and the least among them, perhaps; yet it is, nevertheless, hard to overcome positive repulsion.”

There was a pause now, during which I could count every throb of my heart, and throat, and temples—­my whole frame was transfigured into an anvil, on which a thousand tiny hammers seemed to ring.  Yet I could not move, nor speak, nor weep—­no wretchedness was ever more supreme than this cataleptic seizure.  Evelyn was the first to break the transient silence.

“Your path is a plain one, Claude Bainrothe; fulfill your contract, sealed with gold, and bear patiently your selected lot.”

“Evelyn, one word—­let it be sincere:  do you hate and scorn me?  Answer me as you would speak to your own soul.”

“No, Claude, no, yet the blow was hard to bear—­struck, too, as you must reflect, so suddenly!  Only the day before abandonment, remember, you had made protestations of such undying constancy.  Your conduct was surely inconstant, at least.”

“I make them still, those professions you scorn so deeply.”

“Away, false man, lest the sleeper awaken!”

“You say there is no danger of that, and that in their coffins the dead are not more insensible.”

“To see you kneeling at my feet might bring the dead even to life,” she laughed, contemptuously.  “I am sick of this drama; be natural for once.  We can both afford to be so now.”

“Do not spurn me, Evelyn!  Never was my love for you so wild as now.”  I heard him kissing her hands passionately, and his voice, as he spoke these words, was choked with grief.

“O Claude, let my hand go; at least consider appearances.  Mrs. Austin will be here in a moment now; what will she think of you?  What am I to think of such caprice?”

“One word, then, Evelyn—­tell me that you forgive me—­on such conditions I will release your hands.”

“When I forgive you, Claude, I shall be wholly indifferent to you,” she said, gently.  “Do you still claim forgiveness?  I am not angry, though, take that assurance for all comfort.  Then, if you will have it” (and I heard a kiss exchanged), “this confirmation.”

“Then you are not wholly indifferent to me, Evelyn?” he said, in eager tones, “you care for me still—­a little?”