George said nothing, so after a little time, Frances continued:  “Tell me that you know I am not the creature evil-minded persons pretend to believe I am.  I might have been a duchess, with grand estates, by gift from the king, but I am not, nor ever shall be.  I loathe him, and so great is my sense of contamination that when he touches my hand in dancing, I almost feel that it is a thing of evil.”

“And you, whom I hear the king would marry, who, I am told, might pick and choose a husband from among the richest and noblest of the land, for whom it is said the Duke of Tyrconnel is longing, come here to this hole and throw yourself away on me, an outcast; one who makes his daily bread by labor at a printing-press, one on whose life the king has set a price?  You come here to give yourself to me!” cried George, almost stunned by surprise and joy.

He held her close to him and kissed her lips, not to his content, for that would have been impossible, but till he checked himself to hear her answer.  But she did not speak, and after a little time he led her, groping his way in the dark, to a box standing against the wall, where they sat down.  She clasped his hand, but did not answer his question.

Supposing that her silence was without cause, and wishing an answer in words, George continued:—­

“It is difficult to believe that you, who went to court to make your fortune, should refuse it when it is in your grasp and should give yourself to me.”

“No, no,” she answered, withdrawing her hand from his clasp and covering her face.  “I do not, I may not give myself to you.  But I do give you love, such as I believe no woman ever before gave to a man.  I am going to marry the Duke of Tyrconnel.  But when I learned how grievously I had wronged you, I would not give him my promise of marriage until I had seen you and had told you of my love, and had taken one moment of happiness before the door is closed between us forever.”

This answer came to Hamilton as a chilling surprise, but a moment’s consideration brought him to see that the girl was right, save, perhaps, in telling her love to a man she could not marry.  His knowledge of womankind did not help him to know that her hopelessness had been a stimulant, both to her love and to its prodigal expression.  It did not occur to him that what she had done and said might be the outpouring of her despair, and that even a faint hope of ever possessing him as her husband might have operated as a restraint for modesty’s sake.  Therefore, with unconscious perversity, Hamilton resented what Frances had done in giving him her unmeasured love when she knew that she could not give herself, and he spoke from the midst of his pain:—­

“I know that I am not worthy to be your husband.  Even had you not taken so great pains to tell me, but had been willing to wreck your life by marrying me, I should not have accepted the sacrifice.  From the first, my love for you has been the one unselfish impulse of my life, and since I have almost lost hope of ever being worthy of you, I should not have permitted you to share my wretched life, even had you been willing.  But for you to come to me and to give me your love, only to snatch it back again before I have had time to refuse the sacrifice, is cruel.”