irl loves me better than I
thought. She is sensible and enlightened; she cannot pretend to dictate
an opinion to a man like me."

He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and took her
hand, which she yielded to him quietly, leading her to one of the few
remaining chairs, and seating himself beside her.

"Dear Isaura," he said, talking rapidly all the while he performed this
ceremony, "I need not assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to
which the imbecility of our Government, and the cowardice, or rather
the treachery, of our generals, has reduced you. I only heard of it late
last night from my mother. I hasten to claim my right to share with you
the humble resources which I have saved by the intellectual labours that
have absorbed all such moments as my military drudgeries left to the
talents which, even at such a moment, paralysing minds less energetic,
have sustained me:"--and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and
silver on the table beside her chair.

"Gustave," then said Isaura, "I am well pleased that you thus prove
that I was not mistaken when I thought and said that, despite all
appearances, all errors, your heart was good. Oh, do but follow its true
impulses, and--"

"Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet," interrupted Gustave, with a
fervour which sounded somewhat theatrical and hollow.

The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly; but Gustave did not like
the smile.

"Poor Gustave," she said, with a melancholy pathos in her soft voice,
"do you not understand that the time has come when such commonplace
compliments ill suit our altered positions to each other? Nay, listen
to me patiently; and let not my words in this last interview pain you
to recall. If either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily
contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination
the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that
on my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career;
that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek
distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother,
the duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God,
should withhold and save you--when you said all this, and I believed it,
I felt as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed
to me in the crisis of its struggle and peril. Gustave, I repent; I was
to blame."

"How to blame?"

"I ove