"Arthur!" answered Marie, and her bloodless lips so quivered, they
could scarcely frame the word--"wrong I have done thee, grievous
wrong; but oh! blast not my memory with injuries I have not inflicted.
Look back; recall our every interview. Had I intended to deceive, to
call forth the holiest feelings of the human heart, to make them a
mock and scorn, to triumph in a power, of whose very existence till
thou breathed love I was unconscious--should I have said our love
was vain--was so utterly hopeless, we could never be other than
strangers--should I have conjured thee to leave--aye, and to forget
me, had I not felt that I loved too well, and trembled for myself yet
more than for thee? Oh, Arthur, Arthur, do not add to the bitterness
of this moment by unjust reproaches! I have injured thee enough by my
ill-fated beauty, and too readily acknowledged love: but more I have
not done. From the first I said that there was a fate around us--thine
I might never be!"

"Then wherefore wed Morales? Is he not as I am, and therefore equally
unmeet mate for thee--if, indeed, thy tale be true? Didst thou not
tell me, when I implored thee to say if thy hand was pledged unto
another, that such misery was spared thee--thou wert free, and free
wouldst remain while thy heart was mine?"

"Ay," faltered Marie, "thou rememberest all too well."

"Then didst thou not deceive? Art thou not as perjured now as I once
believed thee true--as false as thou art lovely? How couldst thou
love, if so soon it was as nought?"

"Then believe me all thou sayest," replied Marie, more