‘Do you know, they make me jealous?’ he said.

Caroline answered him with a faint smile.

’Reassure me, my dear lady; you are not going with your brother this morning?’

‘Your Grace, I have no choice!’

’May I speak to you as your warmest friend?  From what I hear, it appears to be right that your brother should not stay.  To the best of my ability I will provide for him:  but I sincerely desire to disconnect you from those who are unworthy of you.  Have you not promised to trust in me?  Pray, let me be your guide.’

Caroline replied to the heart of his words:  ‘I dare not.’

‘What has changed you?’

‘I am not changed, but awakened,’ said Caroline.

The Duke paced on in silence.

‘Pardon me if I comprehend nothing of such a change,’ he resumed.  ’I asked you to sacrifice much; all that I could give in return I offered.  Is it the world you fear?’

‘What is the world to such as I am?’

‘Can you consider it a duty to deliver yourself bound to that man again?’

‘Heaven pardon me, my lord, I think of that too little!’

The Duke’s next question:  ‘Then what can it be?’ stood in his eyes.

‘Oh!’ Caroline’s touch quivered on his arm, ’Do not suppose me frivolous, ungrateful, or—­or cowardly.  For myself you have offered more happiness than I could have hoped for.  To be allied to one so generous, I could bear anything.  Yesterday you had my word:  give it me back to-day!’

Very curiously the Duke gazed on her, for there was evidence of internal torture across her forehead.

‘I may at least beg to know the cause for this request?’

She quelled some throbbing in her bosom.  ‘Yes.’

He waited, and she said:  ’There is one—­if I offended him, I could not live.  If now I followed my wishes, he would lose his faith in the last creature that loves him.  He is unhappy.  I could bear what is called disgrace, my lord—­I shudder to say it—­I could sin against heaven; but I dare not do what would make him despise me.’

She was trembling violently; yet the nobleman, in his surprise, could not forbear from asking who this person might be, whose influence on her righteous actions was so strong.

‘It is my brother, my lord,’ she said.

Still more astonished, ‘Your brother!’ the Duke exclaimed.  ’My dearest lady, I would not wound you; but is not this a delusion?  We are so placed that we must speak plainly.  Your brother I have reason to feel sure is quite unworthy of you.’

‘Unworthy?  My brother Evan?  Oh! he is noble, he is the best of men!’

‘And how, between yesterday and to-day, has he changed you?’

‘It is that yesterday I did not know him, and to-day I do.’

Her brother, a common tradesman, a man guilty of forgery and the utmost baseness—­all but kicked out of the house!  The Duke was too delicate to press her further.  Moreover, Caroline had emphasized the ‘yesterday’ and ‘to-day,’ showing that the interval which had darkened Evan to everybody else, had illumined him to her.  He employed some courtly eloquence, better unrecorded; but if her firm resolution perplexed him, it threw a strange halo round the youth from whom it sprang.