e creature evil-minded persons pretend to
believe I am. I might have been a duchess, with grand estates, by gift
from the king, but I am not, nor ever shall be. I loathe him, and so
great is my sense of contamination that when he touches my hand in
dancing, I almost feel that it is a thing of evil."

"And you, whom I hear the king would marry, who, I am told, might pick
and choose a husband from among the richest and noblest of the land, for
whom it is said the Duke of Tyrconnel is longing, come here to this hole
and throw yourself away on me, an outcast; one who makes his daily bread
by labor at a printing-press, one on whose life the king has set a price?
You come here to give yourself to me!" cried George, almost stunned by
surprise and joy.

He held her close to him and kissed her lips, not to his content, for
that would have been impossible, but till he checked himself to hear her
answer. But she did not speak, and after a little time he led her,
groping his way in the dark, to a box standing against the wall, where
they sat down. She clasped his hand, but did not answer his question.

Supposing that her silence was without cause, and wishing an answer in
words, George continued:--

"It is difficult to believe that you, who went to court to make your
fortune, should refuse it when it is in your grasp and should give
yourself to me."

"No, no," she answered, withdrawing her hand from his clasp and covering
her face. "I do not, I may not give myself to you. But I do give you
love, such as I believe no woman ever before gave to a man. I am going to
marry the Duke of Tyrconnel. But when I learned how grievously I had
wronged you, I would not give him my promise of marriage until I had seen
you and had told you of my love, and had taken one moment of happiness
before the door is closed between us forever."

This answer came to Hamilton as a chilling surprise, but a moment's
consideration brought him to see that the girl was right, save, perhaps,
in telling her love to a man she could not marry. His knowledge of
womankind did not help him to know that her hopelessness had been a
stimulant, both to her love and to its prodigal expression. It did not
occur to him that what she had done and said might be the outpouring of
her despair, and that even a faint hope of ever possessing him as her
husband might have operated as a restraint for modesty's sake. Therefore,
with unconscious perversity, Hamilton resented what Fra