gly,--

"You refused him your hand because you thought it base ingratitude to
those relatives who had sheltered you in your orphan and unprotected
condition, and who had other, as they supposed, _higher_ views for him.
You feared by letting him know that you loved him to injure his future
prospects, and you nearly blighted that future by the despair you caused
him when he lost you. And since you have been restored, at least to his
sight, you have with a martyr's heroism adhered to your plan of
self-sacrifice because you thought that to relinquish it would draw down
upon him and yourself the wrath of his haughty grandmother,--I will not
say of his father; because, too, you believed that you would be accused
of ingratitude. And you have allowed him to suffer unimaginable torture
rather than acknowledge that the lover to whom you have been so
true,--the lover for whom you have sacrificed yourself,--the lover most
unworthy of you (save through that love which renders the humblest
worthy),--is the man you rejected in the Chateau de Gramont at the risk
of breaking his heart."

Madeleine dropped her face upon her hands with a low sob, but Maurice
drew the hands away, and folding his arms about her said, fervently,--

"Madeleine, my own, my best beloved, it is too late for concealment now!
I know whom you love,--it is too late for denial. Look at me and tell me
once,--tell me only _once_ that it is true you do love me; tell me this,
and it will repay me for all I have suffered."

But Madeleine did not yield to his prayer; she tried to extricate
herself from his arms, but they clasped her too tightly; and when she
could speak she said, through her tears,--

"You ensnared me,--you entrapped me to this! I should never have told
you! And what does it avail,--I can never be your wife."

"It avails beyond all calculation to know that you love me, even if, as
you say, you cannot be my wife. Madeleine, to know that you love no
other,--that you love _me_,--that I have a claim upon you which I may
not be able to urge until we meet in heaven,--is heaven on earth!"

What could Madeleine reply?

"But why, Madeleine, can you not become mine? My father would no longer
object. Are you not sure of that? Do you not see how he clings to you?
And my grandmother"--

"It would kill her," broke in Madeleine, "to see you the husband of one
whom she detests and looks down upon as a degraded outcast. The Duke de
Gramont's daughter only feels h