that he had been supposed in those days to care a
great deal for Miss Blanche Challoner--a most lovely girl of seventeen.
"Mrs. Vane used to accuse you of caring too much for her," she said,
aloud.

"She accused me of caring for some one else more than for Blanche
Challoner," he significantly returned; "and for once her jealous
surmises were not misplaced. No Lady Isabel, it was not Blanche
Challoner I had wished to drive home. Could you not have given a better
guess than that at the time?" he added, turning to her.

There was no mistaking the tone of his voice or the glance of his eye.
Lady Isabel felt a crimson flush rising and she turned her face away.

"The past is gone, and cannot be recalled," he continued, "but we both
played our cards like simpletons. If ever two beings were formed to love
each other, you and I were. I sometimes thought you read my feelings--"

Surprise had kept her silent, but she interrupted him now, haughtily
enough.

"I must speak, Lady Isabel; it is but a few words, and then I am silent
forever. I would have declared myself had I dared, but my uncertain
position, my debts, my inability to keep a wife, weighed me down; and,
instead of appealing to Sir Peter, as I ought to have done, for the
means to assume a position that would justify me in asking Lord Mount
Severn's daughter, I crushed my hopes within me, and suffered you to
escape--"

"I will not hear this, Captain Levison," she cried, rising from her seat
in anger.

He touched her arm to place her on it again.

"One single moment yet, I pray you. I have for years wished that you
should know why I lost you--a loss that tells upon me yet. I have
bitterly worked out my own folly since I knew not how passionately
I loved you until you became the wife of another. Isabel, I love you
passionately still."

"How dare you presume so to address me?"

She spoke in a cold, dignified tone of hauteur, as it was her bounden
duty to speak; but, nevertheless, she was conscious of an undercurrent
of feeling, whispering that, under other auspices, the avowal would have
brought to her heart the most intense bliss.

"What I have said can do no hurt now," resumed Captain Levison; "the
time has gone by for it; for neither you nor I are likely to forget that
you are a wife. We have each chosen our path in life, and must abide by
it; the gulf between us is impassable but the fault was mine. I ought
to have avowed my affection, and not have suffered