as yet, and I still persist in my suit.
I have promised to your father that I would not recede before your first
unconsidered refusal."

"I will go to my father at once."

"Does he request you to do so in his letter? Look again. Pardon me, but
he foresaw your impetuosity; and I have another note for Lady Lansmere,
in which he begs her ladyship not to sanction your return to him (should
you so wish) until he come or send for you himself. He will do so
whenever your word has redeemed his own."

"And do you dare to talk to me thus, and yet pretend to love me?"

Randal smiled ironically.

"I pretend but to wed you. Love is a subject on which I might have
spoken formerly, or may speak hereafter. I give you some little time to
consider. When I next call, let me hope that we may fix the day for our
wedding."

"Never!"

"You will be, then, the first daughter of your House who disobeyed a
father; and you will have this additional crime; that you disobeyed him
in his sorrow, his exile, and his fall."

Violante wrung her hands.

"Is there no choice, no escape?"

"I see none for either. Listen to me. I love you, it is true; but it is
not for my happiness to marry one who dislikes me, nor for my ambition
to connect myself with one whose poverty is greater than my own. I marry
but to keep my plighted faith with your father, and to save you from a
villain you would hate more than myself, and from whom no walls are
a barrier, no laws a defence. One person, indeed, might perhaps have
preserved you from the misery you seem to anticipate with me; that
person might defeat the plans of your father's foe,--effect, it might
be, terms which could revoke his banishment and restore his honours;
that person is--"

"Lord L'Estrange?"

"Lord L'Estrange!" repeated Randal, sharply, and watching her pale
parted lips and her changing colour; "Lord L'Estrange! What could he do?
Why did you name him?"

Violante turned aside. "He saved my father once," said she, feelingly.

"And has interfered, and trifled, and promised, Heaven knows what, ever
since: yet to what end? Pooh! The person I speak of your father
would not consent to see, would not believe if he saw her; yet she is
generous, noble, could sympathize with you both. She is the sister of
your father's enemy, the Marchesa di Negra. I am convinced that she
has great influence with her brother,--that she has known enough of his
secrets to awe him into renouncing all designs on yours