“All I ask of you is to open your heart to him,” she said.

He kept silent.

“Call him a man,—­he is, and must ever be the child of your education, my friend.”

“You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins himself, he spares the world of young women.  Yes, that is something!”

Closely she scanned the mask.  It was impenetrable.  He could meet her eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show what he felt.  Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over offended love.  Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then:  a blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance.

“Am I pardoned for coming to you?” she said, after a pause.

“Surely I can read my Emmeline’s intentions,” he gently replied.

“Very poor ones.  I feel my weakness.  I cannot utter half I have been thinking.  Oh, if I could!”

“You speak very well, Emmeline.”

“At least, I am pardoned!”

“Surely so.”

“And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?—­may I beg it?—­will you bless him?”

He was again silent.

“Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over.”

As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her bosom.

The baronet was startled.  In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him, he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.

“It’s day already!” he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.

Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and glanced up silently at Richard’s moon standing in wane toward the West.  She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more than the baronet.  But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom.  From that moment she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol—­a process dangerous to idols.  He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness, murmured:  “God’s rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!  My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well.  She does not shame the day.”  He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.

“I could bear many, many!” she replied, meeting his eyes, “and you would see me look better and better, if...if only...” but she had no encouragement to end the sentence.

Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him:  at any rate their Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her.  She felt the arm and talked of the morning.