“During the last two years,” she said, “I have had twenty offers; and among them three or four that would have been acceptable to a duchess.  I have refused them, in spite of M. Elgin and Mrs. Brian.  Only yesterday, a man of twenty-five, a Gordon Chalusse, was here at my feet.  I have sent him off like the others, preferring my dear count.  And why?”

She remained a moment buried in thought, her eyes swimming in tears; and, answering apparently her own questions, rather than Daniel’s, she went on,—­

“Thanks to my beauty, as the world calls it, a fatal beauty, alas!  I have been admired, courted, filled to satiety with compliments.  They say I am in the most elegant and most polished society in Europe; and yet I have looked in vain for the man whose eye could for a moment even break the peace of my heart.  I have seen everywhere only persons of like perfection, whose characters had no more wrinkles than the coat made by the first of tailors, all equally eager and gallant, playing well, talking well, dancing well, riding well.”

She shook her head with a movement full of energy; and, beaming with enthusiasm, she exclaimed,—­

“Ah!  I had dreamed of better things to come.  What I dreamed of was a man of noble heart, with an inflexible will, capable of attempting what others dared not,—­what, I do not know, but something grand, perilous, impossible.  I dreamed of one of those ambitious men with a pale brow, a longing look, whose eyes sparkle with genius,—­one of those strong men who impose their will upon the multitude, and who remove mountains by the force of their will.

“Alas! to repay the love of such a man, I would have found treasures in my heart, which now remain useless, like all the wealth that is buried at the bottom of the sea.  I would have drunk deep from the cup of my hopes; my pulse would have kept time with the fever of his excitement.  For his sake, I would have made myself small, humble, useful; I would have watched in his looks for the shadow of a desire.

“But how proud I would have been, I, his wife, of his success and of his glories, of the reverence paid him by his admirers, and the hatred of his enemies!”

Her voice had vibrations in it that might have stirred up the heart of a stoic.  The splendor of her exalted beauty illumined the room.

And gradually, one by one, Daniel’s suspicions vanished, or fell to pieces like the ill-jointed pieces of an ancient armor.  But Miss Brandon paused, ashamed of her vehemence, and continued more slowly,—­

“Now, sir, you know me better than any other person in this world.  You alone have read the innermost heart of Sarah Brandon.  And yet I see you today for the first time in my life.  And yet you are the first man who has ever dared to speak harshly to me, harsh unto insult.  Will you make me repent of my frankness?  Oh, no, no! surely you will not be so cruel.  I know you to be a man of honor and of high principles; I know how, in order to save a name which you revere, you have risked your prospects in life, the girl you love, and an enormous fortune.  Yes, Miss Ville-Handry has made no ordinary choice.”