aten. Yes, Florence, I know not only
that I love you more than he does, but I love you with a love he is
incapable of feeling. I do not wish to say one word in his dispraise,
least of all to you, in whose favour I want to stand well; but I wish
you--and it is no unfair request--to prove the affection of the two men
who solicit your love."

"I am satisfied with his."

"You may be satisfied with the version your own imagination renders
of it. You may be satisfied with the picture you have coloured for
yourself; but I want you to be just to yourself, and just to me. Now if
I can show you in his own handwriting--the ink only dried on the paper a
day ago--a letter from him to me, in which he asks my pardon in terms so
abject as never were wrung from any man, except under the pressure of a
personal fear?"

"You say this to outrage me. Aunt Grainger," cried she, in a voice
almost a scream, "listen to what this gentleman has had the temerity to
tell me. Repeat it now, Sir, if you dare."

"What is this, Mr. Calvert? You have not surely presumed--"

"I have simply presumed, Madam, to place my pretensions in rivalry with
Mr. Loyd's. I have been offering to your niece the half of a very humble
fortune, with a name not altogether ignoble."

"Oh dear, Mr. Calvert!" cried the old lady, "I never suspected this. I'm
sure my niece is aware of the great honour we all feel--at least I
do most sensibly--that, if she was not already engaged--Are you ill,
dearest? Oh, she has fainted. Leave us, Mr. Calvert Send Maria here.
Milly, some water immediately."

For more than an hour Calvert walked the little grass-plot before the
door, and no tidings came to him from those within. To a momentary
bustle and confusion, a calm succeeded--lights flitted here and there
through the cottage. He fancied he heard something like sobbing, and
then all was still and silent.

"Are you there, Mr. Calvert?" cried Milly, at last, as she moved out
into the dark night air. "She is better now--much better. She seems
inclined to sleep, and we have left her."

"You know how it came on?" asked he in a whisper. "You know what brought
it about?"

"No; nothing of it."

"It was a letter that I showed her--a letter of Loyd's to
myself--conceived in such terms as no man of, I will not say of spirit,
but a common pretension to the sense of gentleman, could write. Wait a
moment, don't be angry with me till you hear me out. We had quarrelled
in the morning. It was