n that you insist upon your title?"

"All ladies insist on what you call their title, from gentlemen,
except under the privilege of greater intimacy than you have the
right to claim. You did not call Miss Dale by her Christian name till
you had obtained permission, I suppose?"

"You used to let me call you so."

"Never! Once or twice, when you have done so, I have not forbidden
it, as I should have done. Very well, sir, as you have nothing to
tell me, I will leave you. I must confess that I did not think you
were such a coward." And she prepared to go, gathering up the skirts
of her habit, and taking up the whip which she had laid on the
window-sill.

"Stay a moment, Alexandrina," he said; "I am not happy, and you
should not say words intended to make me more miserable."

"And why are you unhappy?"

"Because-- I will tell you instantly, if I may believe that I am
telling you only, and not the whole household."

"Of course I shall not talk of it to others. Do you think that I
cannot keep a secret?"

"It is because I have promised to marry one woman, and because I love
another. I have told you everything now; and if you choose to say
again that I am fighting under false colours I will leave the castle
before you can see me again."

"Mr Crosbie!"

"Now you know it all, and may imagine whether or no I am very happy.
I think you said it was time to dress;--suppose we go?" And without
further speech the two went off to their separate rooms.

Crosbie, as soon as he was alone in his chamber, sat himself down in
his arm-chair, and went to work striving to make up his mind as to
his future conduct. It must not be supposed that the declaration just
made by him had been produced solely by his difficulty at the moment.
The atmosphere of Courcy Castle had been at work upon him for the
last week past. And every word that he had heard, and every word
that he had spoken, had tended to destroy all that was good and true
within him, and to foster all that was selfish and false. He had said
to himself a dozen times during that week that he never could be
happy with Lily Dale, and that he never could make her happy. And
then he had used the old sophistry in his endeavour to teach himself
that it was right to do that which he wished to do. Would it not be
better for Lily that he should desert her, than marry her against
the dictates of his own heart? And if he really did not love her,
would he not be committing a greater crime