'Stop, Louis! You forget! Did I not tell you that he expressly
warns me against you? He must have heard of what happened before: he
says I had prudence once to withstand, and he trusts to my spirit and
discretion to--' Mary stopped short of the phrase before her eyes--to
resist the interested solicitations of necessitous nobility, and the
allurements of a beggarly coronet. 'No,' she concluded; 'he says
that you are the last person whom he could think of allowing me to
accept.' She hid her face in her hands, and her voice died away.

'Happily that is done,' said Louis, not yet disconcerted; 'but if you
go, as I own you must, it shall be with a letter of mine, explaining
all. You will plead for me--I think you will, and when he is
satisfied that we are no rebels, then the first ship that sails for
Peru--Say that will do, Mary.'

'No, Louis, I know my father.' She roused herself and sat upright,
speaking resolutely, but not daring to look at him--'I made up my
mind last night. It was weak and selfish in me to enter into this
engagement, and it must be broken off. You must be left free--not
bound for years and years.'

'Oh, Mary! Mary! this is too much. I deserved distrust by my
wretched folly and fickleness last year, but I did not know what you
were to me then--my most precious one! Can you not trust me! Do you
not know how I would wait?'

'You would wait,' said poor Mary, striving with choking tears, 'and
be sorry you had waited.'