to you," he faltered, "Lucia; Lucia, whom I
dare not call mine."

"Say nothing, Paullus Arvina," she replied, "thou art a noble and generous
soul?--Say nothing, for I know what thou would'st say. I have said it to
myself many times already. Oh! wo is me! too late! too late! But I have
come hither, now, upon a brief and a pleasant errand. For it _is_
pleasant, let them scoff who will! I say, it _is_ pleasant to do right,
let what may come of it. Would God, that I had always thought so!"

"Would God, indeed!" answered the young man, "then had we not both been
wretched."

"Wretched! aye! most, most wretched!" cried the girl, a large bright tear
standing in either eye. "And art thou wretched, Paullus."

"Utterly wretched!" he said, with a deep groan, and buried his face for a
moment in his hands. "Even before I looked upon you, thought of you, I was
miserable! and now, now--words cannot paint my anguish, my
self-degradation!"

"Aye! is it so?" she said, a faint sad smile flitting across her pallid
lips. "Why I should feel abased and self-degraded, I can well comprehend.
I, who have fallen from the high estate, the purity, the wealth, the
consciousness of chaste and virtuous maidenhood! I, the despised, the
castaway, the fallen! But thou, thou!--from thee I looked but for
reproaches--the just reproaches I have earned by my faithless folly! I
thought, indeed, to have found you wretched, writhing in the dark bonds
which I, most miserable, cast around you; and cursing her who fettered
you!"

"Cursing myself," he answered, "rather. Cursing my own insane and selfish
passion, which alone trammelled me, which alone ruined one, better and
brighter fifty fold than I!--alas! alas! Lucia."

And forgetful of all that he had heard to her disparagement from her bad
father's lips, or, if he half remembered discrediting all in that moment
of excitement, he flung himself at her feet, and grovelled like a crushed
worm on the floor, in the degrading consciousness of guilt.

"Arise, arise for shame, young Arvina!" she said. "The ground, at a
woman's feet, is no place for a man ever; least of all _such_ a woman's.
Arise, and mark me, when I tell you that, which to tell you, only, I came
hither. Arise, I say, and make me not scorn the man, whom I admire,
whom--wo is me! I love."

Paullus regained his feet slowly, and abashed; it seemed that all the
pride and haughtiness of his character had given way at once. Mute and
humiliated, he sa