on me, my lord, I think of that too little!'

The Duke's next question: 'Then what can it be?' stood in his eyes.

'Oh!' Caroline's touch quivered on his arm, 'Do not suppose me frivolous,
ungrateful, or--or cowardly. For myself you have offered more happiness
than I could have hoped for. To be allied to one so generous, I could
bear anything. Yesterday you had my word: give it me back to-day!'

Very curiously the Duke gazed on her, for there was evidence of internal
torture across her forehead.

'I may at least beg to know the cause for this request?'

She quelled some throbbing in her bosom. 'Yes.'

He waited, and she said: 'There is one--if I offended him, I could not
live. If now I followed my wishes, he would lose his faith in the last
creature that loves him. He is unhappy. I could bear what is called
disgrace, my lord--I shudder to say it--I could sin against heaven; but I
dare not do what would make him despise me.'

She was trembling violently; yet the nobleman, in his surprise, could not
forbear from asking who this person might be, whose influence on her
righteous actions was so strong.

'It is my brother, my lord,' she said.

Still more astonished, 'Your brother!' the Duke exclaimed. 'My dearest
lady, I would not wound you; but is not this a delusion? We are so placed
that we must speak plainly. Your brother I have reason to feel sure is
quite unworthy of you.'

'Unworthy? My brother Evan? Oh! he is noble, he is the best of men!'

'And how, between yesterday and to-day, has he changed you?'

'It is that yesterday I did not know him, and to-day I do.'

Her brother, a common tradesman, a man guilty of forgery and the utmost
baseness--all but kicked out of the house! The Duke was too delicate to
press her further. Moreover, Caroline had emphasized the 'yesterday' and
'to-day,' showing that the interval which had darkened Evan to everybody
else, had illumined him to her. He employed some courtly eloquence,
better unrecorded; but if her firm resolution perplexed him, it threw a
strange halo round the youth from whom it sprang.

The hour was now eleven, and the Countess thought it full time to retire
to her entrenchment in Mrs. Bonner's chamber. She had great things still
to do: vast designs were in her hand awaiting the sanction of Providence.
Alas! that little idle promenade was soon to be repented. She had joined
her sister, thinking it safer to have her upstairs till they were quit of
Evan. The