eelings prevent you from viewing their
object so dispassionately as I do.'

'I am at a loss for your meaning; at least, favour me by speaking
explicitly: you see I respect your sentiments, and do not presume to
urge that on which my very happiness depends.'

'To be brief, then, I will not affect to conceal that marriage is a
state which has often been the object of my meditations. I think it the
duty of all women that so important a change in their destiny should
be well considered. If I know anything of myself, I am convinced that I
should never survive an unhappy marriage.'

'But why dream of anything so utterly impossible?'

'So very probable, so very certain, you mean. Ay! I repeat my words, for
they are truth. If I ever marry, it is to devote every feeling and every
thought, each hour, each instant of existence, to a single being for
whom I alone live. Such devotion I expect in return; without it I should
die, or wish to die; but such devotion can never be returned by you.'

'You amaze me! I! who live only on your image.'

'Your education, the habits in which you are brought up, the maxims
which have been instilled into you from your infancy, the system which
each year of your life has more matured, the worldly levity with which
everything connected with woman is viewed by you and your companions;
whatever may be your natural dispositions, all this would prevent you,
all this would render it a perfect impossibility, all this will ever
make you utterly unconscious of the importance of the subject on which
we are now conversing. Pardon me for saying it, you know not of what you
speak. Yes! however sincere may be the expression of your feelings to me
this moment, I shudder to think on whom your memory dwelt even this hour
but yesterday. I never will peril my happiness on such a chance; but
there are others who do not think as I do.'

'Miss Dacre! save me! If you knew all, you would not doubt. This moment
is my destiny.'

'My dear Duke of St. James, save yourself. There is yet time. You have
my prayers.'

'Let me then hope----'

'Indeed, indeed, it cannot be. Here our conversation on this subject
ends for ever.'

'Yet we part friends!' He spoke in a broken voice.

'The best and truest!' She extended her arm; he pressed her hand to his
impassioned lips, and quitted the house, mad with love and misery.

CHAPTER XVIII.

_Joys of the Alhambra_

THE Duke threw himself into his carriage in that