to
ask," said Madeleine, speaking slowly, but firmly. "Maurice, my cousin,
I shall never be able to tell you,--you can never know,--what emotions
of thankfulness you have awakened in my soul, nor how unutterably
precious your words are to me. Thus much I may say; for the rest, _I can
never become your wife!_"

"You refuse me because my father and my grandmother have _compelled_ you
to do so by their reproaches,--their _menaces_, I might say!" cried
Maurice, wholly forgetting his wonted respect in the rush of tumultuous
feelings. "This and this only is your reason for consigning me to
misery."

The fear that she had awakened unfilial emotions in the bosom of Maurice
infused fresh fortitude into Madeleine's spirit.

"No, Maurice, you are wrong. If my aunt and Count Tristan had not
uttered one word on the subject, my answer to you would have been the
same."

"How can that be possible? How can I have been so deceived? There is
only _one_ obstacle which _can_ discourage me, only one which can force
me to yield you up, and that is an admission, from your own lips, that
your affections are already bestowed,--that your heart is no longer
free."

Madeleine, without hesitation, replied in a clear, steady, deliberate
tone, looking her cousin full in the face, and not by the faintest sign
betraying the poniard which she heroically plunged into her own devoted
breast,--

"My affections are bestowed; my heart is _no longer free!_"

"Madeleine, Madeleine! you do not love Maurice,--you love some one
else?" questioned Bertha, in sorrowful astonishment.

Maurice spoke no word. He stood one moment looking at Madeleine as a
drowning man might have looked at the ship that could have saved him
disappearing in the distance. Then he murmured, hardly conscious of his
own words,--

"And I felt sure her heart was mine! O Madeleine! may you never know
what you have done!"

"Forgive me if you can, Maurice. Be generous enough to pardon one who
has made you suffer. A bright future is before you. The darkness of this
hour will gradually fade out of your memory."

"Say, rather, that you have taken from me my future,--withdrawn its
guiding star, and left me a rayless and eternal night. But why should I
reproach you? What right had I to deem myself worthy of you? You love
_another_. All is spoken in those words: there is nothing more for me to
say, except to thank you for not discarding me without making a
confession which annihilates all