you have not come here to upbraid me, Mr. Fitzgerald."

"Clara," he continued, "I have passed the last year with perfect
reliance upon your faith. I need hardly tell you that it has not been
passed happily, for it has been passed without seeing you. But though
you have been absent from me, I have never doubted you. I have known
that it was necessary that we should wait--wait perhaps till years
should make you mistress of your own actions: but nevertheless I was
not unhappy, for I was sure of your love."

Now it was undoubtedly the case that Fitzgerald was treating her
unfairly; and though she had not her wits enough about her to
ascertain this by process of argument, nevertheless the idea did come
home to her. It was true that she had promised her love to this man,
as far as such promise could be conveyed by one word of assent; but
it was true also that she had been almost a child when she pronounced
that word, and that things which had since occurred had entitled her
to annul any amount of contract to which she might have been supposed
to bind herself by that one word. She bethought herself, therefore,
that as she was so hard pressed she was forced to defend herself.

"I was very young then, Mr. Fitzgerald, and hardly knew what I was
saying: afterwards, when mamma spoke to me, I felt that I was bound
to obey her."

"What, to obey her by forgetting me?"

"No; I have never forgotten you, and never shall. I remember too well
your kindness to my brother; your kindness to us all."

"Psha! you know I do not speak of that. Are you bound to obey your
mother by forgetting that you have loved me?"

She paused a moment before she answered him, looking now full before
her,--hardly yet bold enough to look him in the face.

"No," she said; "I have not forgotten that I loved you. I shall never
forget it. Child as I was, it shall never be forgotten. But I cannot
love you now--not in the manner you would have me."

"And why not, Lady Clara? Why is love to cease on your part--to be
thrown aside so easily by you, while with me it remains so stern a
fact, and so deep a necessity? Is that just? When the bargain has
once been made, should it not be equally binding on us both?"

"I do not think you are fair to me, Mr. Fitzgerald," she said; and
some spirit was now rising in her bosom.

"Not fair to you? Do you say that I am unfair to you? Speak but one
word to say that the troth which you pledged me a year since shall
still rem