airer choice."

"You are cruel, you are unjust," said Dalibard, falteringly. "If I
once presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence? But," he added
hurriedly, "in me,--much as you appear to despise me,--in me, at
least, you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you
seriously set your heart on Mainwaring."

"You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier
Dalibard?"

"I think and I know," answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding
the taunt, "that if you had deigned to render me--poor exile that
I am!--the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of
Laughton."

"So you have said and urged," said Lucretia, with evident curiosity
in her voice; "yet how, and by what art,--wise and subtle as you
are,--could you have won my uncle's consent?"

"That is my secret," returned Dalibard, gloomily; "and since the madness
I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that
nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may
call paternal rests there,--let us pass from this painful subject. Oh,
my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in
the dark and complicated history of actual life,--a brief enchantment,
not to be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all. Look round
the world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten
years afterwards, whither has the passion flown? With a few, indeed,
where there is community of object and character, new excitements, new
aims and hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the
passion continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But
deceive yourself not; there is no such community between you and
Mainwaring. What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to
despise as feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too
soon, will shudder at as unwomanly and hateful."

"Hold!" cried Lucretia, tremulously. "Hold! and if he does, I shall owe
his hate to you,--to your lessons; to your deadly influence!"

"Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you. Can cultivation force from the
soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?"

"I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!"

"Child, I defy you!" said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his
face the expression his son had conveyed to it. "I have warned you, and
my task is done." With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the
side of S