fall from the ideal of womanly virtue?  What woman would not love to feel that the promises of the heart were more sacred and binding than the chains forged by the law?  I defended my errors; and in my appeal to the purity of innocence, I left nothing unsaid that could touch a noble and generous nature.  But as I am telling you everything, I will look for her answer and my farewell letter,” said Benassis, and he went up to his room in search of it.

He returned in a few moments with a worn pocketbook; his hands trembled with emotion as he drew from it some loose sheets.

“Here is the fatal letter,” he said.  “The girl who wrote those lines little knew the value that I should set upon the scrap of paper that holds her thoughts.  This is the last cry that pain wrung from me,” he added, taking up a second letter; “I will lay it before you directly.  My old friend was the bearer of my letter of entreaty; he gave it to her without her parents’ knowledge, humbling his white hair to implore Evelina to read and to reply to my appeal.  This was her answer: 

“‘Monsieur . . .’  But lately I had been her ‘beloved,’ the innocent name she had found by which to express her innocent love, and now she called me Monsieur! . . .  That one word told me everything.  But listen to the rest of the letter: 

“’Treachery on the part of one to whom her life was to be intrusted is a bitter thing for a girl to discover; and yet I could not but excuse you, we are so weak!  Your letter touched me, but you must not write to me again, the sight of your handwriting gives me such unbearable pain.  We are parted for ever.  I was carried away by your reasoning; it extinguished all the harsh feelings that had risen up against you in my soul.  I had been so proud of your truth!  But both of us have found my father’s reasoning irresistible.  Yes, monsieur, I ventured to plead for you.  I did for you what I have never done before, I overcame the greatest fears that I have ever known, and acted almost against my nature.  Even now I am yielding to your entreaties, and doing wrong for your sake, in writing to you without my father’s knowledge.  My mother knows that I am writing to you; her indulgence in leaving me at liberty to be alone with you for a moment has taught me the depth of her love for me, and strengthened my determination to bow to the decree of my family, against which I had almost rebelled.  So I am writing to you, monsieur, for the first and last time.  You have my full and entire forgiveness for the troubles that you have brought into my life.  Yes, you are right; a first love can never be forgotten.  I am no longer an innocent girl; and, as an honest woman, I can never marry another.  What my future will be, I know not therefore.  Only you see, monsieur, that echoes of this year that you have filled will never die away in my life.  But I am in no way accusing you. . . .  “I shall always be beloved!” Why did you write those words?