indoctrinated into the noble uses for which your honorable lord
intends you. It is the town's talk, Melanie. How is it you, whom it
most concerns, alone have not heard it?"

"Raoul," she said, earnestly, imploringly, "I know not if there be any
meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what
you deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure
you, by your father's noble name; by your mother's honor, show me the
worst; but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and
now hears my words, I am not faithless."

"Not faithless? Are you not the wife of another?"

"No!" she replied enthusiastically. "I am not. For I am yours, and
while you live I cannot wed another. Whom God hath joined man cannot
put asunder."

"I fear me that plea will avail us little," Raoul answered. "But say
on, dearest Melanie, and believe that there is nothing you can ask
which I will not give you gladly--even if it were my own life-blood.
Say on, so shall we best arrive at the truth of this intricate and
black affair."

"Mark me, then, Raoul, for every word I shall speak is as true as the
sun in heaven. It is near two years now since we heard that you had
fallen in battle, and that your body had been carried off by the
barbarians. Long! long I hoped and prayed, but prayers and hopes were
alike in vain. I wrote to you often, as I promised, but no line from
you has reached me, since the day when you sailed for India, and that
made me fear that the dread news was true. But at the last, to make
assurance doubly sure, all my own letters were returned to me six
months since, with their seals unbroken, and an endorsement from the
authorities in India that the person addressed was not to be found.
Then hope itself was over; and my father, who never from the first had
doubted that you were no more--"

"Out on him! out on him! the heartless villain!" the young man
interrupted her indignantly. "He knows, as well as I myself, that I am
living; although it is no fault of his or his coadjutors that I am so.
He knows not as yet, however, that I am _here_; but he shall know it
ere long to his cost, my Melanie."

"At least," she answered in a faltering voice, "at least he _swore_ to
me that you were dead; and never having ceased to persecute me, since
the day that fatal tidings reached, to become the wife of La
Rochederrien, now Marquis de Ploermel, he now became doubly urgent--"

"And you, Melanie! you yiel