ay that with all your tact and cleverness, you cannot
find a means of showing that you have been misapprehended, that you are
deeply mortified at being misunderstood, that by an expression of great
humility--Do you know how to be humble?"

"I can be abject," said he, with a peculiar smile.

"I should really like to see you abject!" said she, laughingly.

"Do so then," cried he, dropping on his knee before her, while he still
held her hand, but with a very different tone of voice,--a voice now
tremulous with earnest feeling,--continued: "There can be no humility
deeper than that with which I ask your forgiveness for one word I spoke
to you this evening. If you but knew all the misery it has caused me!"

"Mr. Maitland, this mockery is a just rebuke for my presence here. If I
had not stooped to such a step, you would never have dared this."

"It is no mockery to say what my heart is full of, and what you will not
deny you have read there. No, Alice, you may reject my love; you cannot
pretend to ignore it."

Though she started as he called her Alice, she said nothing, but
only withdrew her hand. At last she said: "I don't think this is very
generous of you. I came to ask a great favor at your hands, and you
would place me in a position not to accept it."

"So far from that," said he, rising, "I distinctly tell you that I place
all, even my honor, at your feet, and without one shadow of a condition.
You say you came here to ask me a favor, and my answer is that I accord
whatever you ask, and make no favor of it. Now, what is it you wish me
to do?"

"It's very hard not to believe you sincere when you speak in this way,"
said she, in a low voice.

"Don't try," said he, in the same low tone.

"You promise me, then, that nothing shall come of this?"

"I do," said he, seriously.

"And that you will make any amends the Commodore's friend may suggest?
Come, come," said she, laughing, "I never meant that you were to marry
the young lady."

"I really don't know how far you were going to put my devotion to the
test."

The pleasantness with which he spoke this so amused her that she broke
again into laughter, and laughed heartily too. "Confess," said she at
last,--"confess it's the only scrape you did not see your way out of!"

"I am ready to confess it's the only occasion in my life in which I had
to place my honor in the hands of a lady."

"Well, let us see if a lady cannot be as adroit as a gentleman in such
an a