first time, clasping to his heart that virgin hand, poured forth the
protestation and the vow. And oh! woe--woe! for the first time she
learned how cheaply the great man held the poor maiden's love, how
little he deemed that purity and genius and affection equalled the
possessor of fame and wealth and power; for plainly visible, boldly
shown and spoken, the love that she had foreseen as a glory from the
heaven sought but to humble her to the dust.

The anguish of that moment was unspeakable,--and she spoke it not.
But as she broke from the profaning clasp, as escaping to the
threshold she cast on the unworthy wooer one look of such reproachful
sorrow as told at once all her love and all her horror, the first act
in the eternal tragedy of man's wrong and woman's grief was closed.
And therefore was Sibyll sad!




CHAPTER V.

KATHERINE.

For several days Hastings avoided Sibyll; in truth, he felt remorse
for his design, and in his various, active, and brilliant life he had
not the leisure for obstinate and systematic siege to a single virtue,
nor was he, perhaps, any longer capable of deep and enduring passion;
his heart, like that of many a chevalier in the earlier day, had
lavished itself upon one object, and sullenly, upon regrets and
dreams, and vain anger and idle scorn, it had exhausted those
sentiments which make the sum of true love. And so, like Petrarch,