what answer he will receive,
what time and meditation may have done or undone for him. She avoids the
interrogation of his eyes, and is surrounded by other men as usual.

The evening seems to him intolerably long and intolerably tedious. It
is, however, for others very gay. There is an improvised dance, ending
in an impromptu cotillion, and following on an act of a comic opera
given with admirable spirit by Lady Dawlish, Mrs. Curzon, and some of
the younger men. Every one is amused, but the hours seem very slow to
him: Gervase scarcely leaves her side at all, and Brandolin, with all
his chivalrous refusal and unchanging resolution to allow no shadow of
doubt to steal over him, feels the odious whispers he has heard and the
outspoken words of Litroff recur to his memory and weigh on him like the
incubus of a nightmare. With a sensation of dread, he realizes that it
is possible, do what he may, that they may haunt him so all his life. A
man may be always master of his acts, but scarcely always of his
thoughts.

"But I will never ask her one syllable," he thinks, "and I will marry
her to-morrow if she chooses."

But will she choose?

He is far from sure. He pleases her intelligence; he possesses her
friendship; but whether he has the slightest power to touch her heart he
does not know. If he loved her less than he does he would be more
confident.

As the interminable hours wear away, and the noise and absurdities of
the cotillion are at their height, she, who never dances anywhere, drops
her fan, and he is before the others in restoring it to her. As she
takes it, she says, in a low voice, "Be in the small library at eleven
to-morrow."

Soon after she leaves the ball-room altogether, and goes to her
bedchamber.

Brandolin goes to his before the cotillion is over, but he sleeps very
little. He longs for the morrow, and yet he dreads it. "_Quand meme_,"
he murmurs, as from his bed he sees the white dawn over the dark masses
of the Surrenden woods. Tell him what she may, he thinks, he will give
her his life if she will take it. He is madly in love, no doubt; but
there is something nobler and purer than the madness of love, than the
mere violent instincts of passion, in his loyalty to her. Before
anything he cherishes the honor of his name and race, and he is willing,
blindfold, to trust her with it.

That morning it seems to him as if the hours would never pass, though
they are few until the clocks strike eleven. T