a," said the Englishman, softly. At the sound of her own name for
the first time heard from those lips, every nerve in her frame quivered.
"Isaura, I have tried to live without you. I cannot. You are all in all
to me: without you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, and
even heaven had withdrawn its stars. Are there differences between us,
differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought? Only let me
hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I love you, and such
differences cease to be discord. Love harmonises all sounds, blends all
colours into its own divine oneness of heart and soul. Look up! is not
the star which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not
still there? Does it not still invite our gaze? Isaura, speak!"

"Hush, hush, hush,"--the girl could say no more, but she recoiled from
his side.

The recoil did not wound him: there was no hate in it. He advanced, he
caught her hand, and continued, in one of those voices which become so
musical in summer nights under starry skies:

"Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without a reverence
due to the religion which binds earth to heaven--a name which to man
should be the symbol of life cheered and beautified, exalted, hallowed.
That name is 'wife.' Will you take that name from me?"

And still Isaura made no reply. She stood mute, and cold, and rigid as
a statue of marble. At length, as if consciousness had been arrested
and was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and passed her hands slowly
over her forehead.

"Mockery, mockery," she said then, with a smile half bitter, half
plaintive, on her colourless lips. "Did you wait to ask me that question
till you knew what my answer must be? I have pledged the name of wife to
another."

"No, no; you say that to rebuke, to punish me! Unsay it! unsay it!"

Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered eyes. "How can
my words pain you?" she said, drearily. "Did you not write that I had
unfitted myself to be wife to you?"

"I?"

"That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of private life? I
felt you were so right! Yes! I am affianced to one who thinks that in
spite of that misfortune--"

"Stop, I command you--stop! You saw my letter to Mrs. Morley. I have
not had one moment free from torture and remorse since I wrote it. But
whatever in that letter you might justly resent--"

"I did not resent--"

Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on. "