law, if, by so doing, he could accomplish his project.

While her mind was thus suffering and in a state little short of
distraction, she was informed that Morano asked permission to see
her, and the servant had scarcely departed with an excuse, before she
repented that she had sent one. In the next moment, reverting to
her former design, and determining to try, whether expostulation and
entreaty would not succeed, where a refusal and a just disdain had
failed, she recalled the servant, and, sending a different message,
prepared to go down to the Count.

The dignity and assumed composure with which she met him, and the
kind of pensive resignation, that softened her countenance, were
circumstances not likely to induce him to relinquish her, serving,
as they did, to heighten a passion, which had already intoxicated his
judgment. He listened to all she said with an appearance of complacency
and of a wish to oblige her; but his resolution remained invariably the
same, and he endeavoured to win her admiration by every insinuating art
he so well knew how to practise. Being, at length, assured, that she
had nothing to hope from his justice, she repeated, in a solemn and
impressive manner, her absolute rejection of his suit, and quitted him
with an assurance, that her refusal would be effectually maintained
against every circumstance, that could be imagined for subduing it. A
just pride had restrained her tears in his presence, but now they flowed
from the fulness of her heart. She often called upon the name of her
late father, and often dwelt with unutterable anguish on the idea of
Valancourt.

She did not go down to supper, but remained alone in her apartment,
sometimes yielding to the influence of grief and terror, and, at others,
endeavouring to fortify her mind against them, and to prepare herself
to meet, with composed courage, the scene of the following morning, when
all the stratagem of Morano and the violence of Montoni would be united
against her.

The evening was far advanced, when Madame Montoni came to her chamber
with some bridal ornaments, which the Count had sent to Emily. She
had, this day, purposely avoided her niece; perhaps, because her usual
insensibility failed her, and she feared to trust herself with a view of
Emily's distress; or possibly, though her conscience was seldom audible,
it now reproached her with her conduct to her brother's orphan child,
whose happiness had been entrusted to her care by