“Poor dear soul, she is happily oblivious, and will take no stenographic notes.  I would as soon declare war against my own shadow as order her away.”

Evidently chagrined, the visitor stood irresolute, and meanwhile the gaze of his companion wandered back to the beauty of the Bay.

He drew a chair close to that which she occupied, and holding his hat as a screen, should Mrs. Waul’s spectacles chance to turn in that direction, spoke earnestly.

“Have I been unpardonably presumptuous in interpreting favourably this permission to see you once more?  Have you done me the honour to ponder the contents of my letter?”

“I certainly have pondered well the contents.”

She kept her hands beyond his reach, and looking steadily into his eager handsome face, she saw it flush deeply.

“Madame, I trust, I believe you are incapable of trifling.”

“In which, you do me bare justice only.  With me the time for trifling is past; and just now life has put on all its tragic vestments.  But how long since General Laurance believed me incapable of—­worse than trifling?”

“Ever since my infamous folly was reproved by you as it deserved.  Ever since you taught me that you were even more noble in soul than lovely in person.  Be generous, and do not humiliate me by recalling that temporary insanity.  Having blundered fearfully, in my ignorance of your real character, does not the offer of yesterday embody all the reparation, all the atonement of which a man is capable?”

“You desire me to consider the proposal contained in your letter, as an expiation for past offences, as an amende honourable for what might have ripened into insult, had it not been nipped in the bud?  Do I translate correctly your gracious diction?”

“No, you cruelly torment me by referring to an audacious and shameful offence, for which I blush.”

“Successful sins are unencumbered by penitential oblations, and only discovered and defeated crimes arouse conscience, and paint one’s cheeks with mortification.  General Laurance merely illustrates a great social law.”

“Do not, dear madame, keep me in this fiery suspense.  I have offered you all that a gentleman can lay at the feet of the woman he loves.”

A cold smile lighted her face, as some arctic moonbeams gleams for an instant across the spires and doomes of an iceberg.

“Once you attempted to offer me your heart, or what remains of its ossified ruins; which I declined.  Now you tender me your hand and name, and indeed it appears that like many of the high-born class you so nobly represent, your heart and hand have never hitherto been conjoined in your devoir.  It were a melancholy pity they should be eternally divorced.”

Bending over her, he exclaimed: 

“As heaven hears me, I swear I love you better than life, than everything else that the broad earth holds!  You cannot possibly doubt my sincerity, for you hold the proof in your own hands.  Be merciful, Odille, and end my anxiety.”