“You mean to say, then, that you never can be mine?”

“That, alas, is what I mean to say—­what I must say.”

“But why, Lucy—­why, dearest Lucy—­for still I must call you so; what has occasioned this?  I cannot understand it.”

She then related to him, briefly, but feelingly, the solemn promise, which, as our readers are aware of, she had given her father, and under what circumstances she had given it, together with his determination, unchanged and irrevocable, to force her to its fulfilment.  Having heard it he paused for some time, whilst Lucy’s eyes were fixed upon him, as if she expected a verdict of life or death from his lips.

“Alas, my dear Lucy,” he said; “noble girl! how can I quarrel with your virtues?  You did it to save a father’s life, and have left me nothing to reproach you with; but in increasing my admiration of you, my heart is doubly struck with anguish at the thought that I must lose you.”

“All, yes,” she replied; “but you must take comfort from the difference in our fates.  You merely have to endure the pain of loss; but I—­oh, dear Charles—­what have I to encounter?  You are not forced into a marriage with one who possesses not a single sentiment or principle of virtue or honor in common with yourself.  No; you are merely—­I deprived of a woman whom you love; but you are not forced into marriage with a woman, abandoned and unprincipled, whom you hate.  Yes, Charles, you must take comfort, as I said, from the difference of our fates.”

“What, Lucy! do you mean to say I can take comfort from your misery?  Am I so selfish or ungenerous as to thank God that you, whose happiness I prefer a thousand times to my own, are more miserable than I am?  I thought you knew me better.”

“Alas, Charles,” she replied, “have compassion on me.  The expression of these generous sentiments almost kills me.  Assume some moral error—­some semblance of the least odious vice—­some startling blemish of character—­some weakness that may enable me to feel that in losing you I have not so much to lose as I thought; something that may make the contrast between the wretch to whom I am devoted and yourself less repulsive.”

“Oh, I assure you, my dear Lucy,” he replied, with a melancholy smile, “that I have my errors, my weaknesses, my frailties, if that will comfort you; so many, indeed, that my greatest virtue, and that of which I am most proud, is my love for you.”

“Ah, Charles, you reason badly,” she replied, “for you prove yourself to be capable of that noble affection which never yet existed in a vicious heart.  As for me, I know not on what hand to turn.  It is said that when a person hanging by some weak branch from the brow of a precipice finds it beginning to give way, and that the plunge below is unavoidable, a certain courage, gained from despair, not only diminishes the terror of the fall, but relieves the heart by a bold and terrible feeling that for the moment banishes fear, and reconciles him to his fate.”