harmonize with your former answer to me."

"To you," repeated Beatrice, smiling, and regaining her lighter manner;
"to you,--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection
for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that you,
with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home. And
then, too," said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave pride in
her air,--"and then, I could not have consented to share my fate with one
whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my heart, if it had
beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could then have brought
but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with poverty and debt. Now,
it may be different. Now I may have the dowry that befits my birth. And
now I may be free to choose according to my heart as woman, not according
to my necessities, as one poor, harassed, and despairing."

"Ah," said Randal, interested, and drawing still closer towards his fair
companion,--"ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to
think that you shall be--rich?"

The marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal
relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and
rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich,
she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had
best change his tone from that of friendship into that of love. While
thus reflecting, Beatrice answered,

"Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should be
half a million--"

"Half a million!" cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained himself