It is not often that young people really know each other; but George certainly did not know Marie Bromar.  In the first place, though he had learned from her the secret of her heart, he had not taught himself to understand how his own sullen silence had acted upon her.  He knew now that she had continued to love him; but he did not know how natural it had been that she should have believed that he had forgotten her.  He could not, therefore, understand how different must now be her feelings in reference to this marriage with Adrian, from what they had been when she had believed herself to be utterly deserted.  And then he did not comprehend how thoroughly unselfish she had been;—­how she had struggled to do her duty to others, let the cost be what it might to herself.  She had plighted herself to Adrian Urmand, not because there had seemed to her to be any brightness in the prospect which such a future promised to her, but because she did verily believe that, circumstanced as she was, it would be better that she should submit herself to her friends.  All this George Voss did not understand.  He had thrown his thunderbolt, and had seen that it had been efficacious.  Its efficacy had been such that his wrath had been turned into tenderness.  He had been so changed in his purpose, that he had been induced to make an appeal to his father at the cost of his father’s enmity.  But that appeal had been in vain, and, as he thought of it all, he told himself that on the appointed day Marie Bromar would become the wife of Adrian Urmand.  He knew well enough that a girl betrothed is a girl already half married.

He was very wretched as he drove his horse along.  Though there was a solace in the thought that the memory of him had still remained in Marie’s heart, there was a feeling akin to despair in this also.  His very tenderness towards her was more unendurable than would have been his wrath.  The pity of it!  The pity of it!  It was that which made him sore of heart and faint of spirit.  If he could have reproached her as cold, mercenary, unworthy, heartless, even though he had still loved her, he could have supported himself by his anger against her unworthiness.  But as it was there was no such support for him.  Though she had been in fault, her virtue towards him was greater than her fault.  She still loved him.  She still loved him,- -though she could not be his wife.

Then he thought of Adrian Urmand and of the man’s success and wealth, and general prosperity in the world.  What if he should go over to Basle and take Adrian Urmand by the throat and choke him?  What if he should at least half choke the successful man, and make it well understood that the other half would come unless the successful man would consent to relinquish his bride?  George, though he did not expect success for himself, was fully purposed that Urmand should not succeed without some interference from him,—­ by means of choking or otherwise.