est Arthur.
If you indeed love me, tempt me not by such fond words; they do but
render duty harder. Oh, wherefore have you loved me!"

But such suffering tone, such broken words, were not likely to check
young Stanley's solicitations. Again and again he urged her, at least
to say what fatal secret so divided them; did he but know it, it
might be all removed. Marie listened to him for several minutes, with
averted head and in unbroken silence; and when she did look on him
again, he started at her marble paleness and the convulsive quivering
of her lips, which for above a minute prevented the utterance of a
word.

"Be it so," she said at length; "you shall know this impassable
barrier. You are too honorable to reveal it. Alas! it is not that fear
which restrained me; my own weakness which shrinks from being to thee
as to other men, were the truth once known, an object of aversion and
of scorn."

"Aversion! scorn! Marie, thou ravest," impetuously exclaimed Stanley;
"torture me not by these dark words: the worst cannot be more
suffering."

But when the words were said, when with blanched lips and cheeks, and
yet unfaltering tone, Marie revealed the secret which was to separate
them for ever, Arthur staggered back, relinquishing the hands he had
so fondly clasped, casting on her one look in which love and aversion
were strangely and fearfully blended, and then burying his face in his
hands, his whole frame shook as with some sudden and irrepressible
anguish.

"Thou knowest all, now," continued Marie, after a pause, and she stood
before him with arms folded on her bosom, and an expression of meek
humility struggling with misery on her beautiful features. "Senor
Stanley, I need not now implore you to leave me; that look was
sufficient, say but you forgive the deception I have been compelled to
practise--and--and forget me. Remember what I am, and you will soon
cease to love."

"Never, never!" replied Stanley, as with passionate agony he flung
himself before her. "Come with me to my own bright land; who shall
know what thou art there? Marie, my own beloved, be mine. What to me
is race or blood? I see but the Marie I have loved, I shall ever love.
Come with me. Edward has made overtures of peace if I would return to
England. For thy sake I will live beneath his sway; be but mine, and
oh, we shall be happy yet."

"And my father," gasped the unhappy girl, for the generous nature of
Arthur's love rendered her trial almos