ome a very grave emotion. I was then so poor, so
friendless, so despondent! Your words of warning impressed me at the
time, but less durably than you might suppose; for that very night as I
sat in my solitary attic I said to myself, 'Why should I shrink, with an
obsolete old-world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed
a mesalliance? What is the value of my birthright now? None,--worse than
none. It excludes me from all careers; my name is but a load that
weighs me down. Why should I make that name a curse as well as a burden?
Nothing is left to me but that which is permitted to all men,--wedded
and holy love. Could I win to my heart the smile of a woman who brings
me that dower, the home of my fathers would lose its gloom.' And
therefore, if at that time I had become familiarly acquainted with her
who had thus attracted my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have
become my destiny; but now!"

"But now?"

"Things have changed. I am no longer poor, friendless, solitary. I have
entered the world of my equals as a Rochebriant; I have made myself
responsible for the dignity of my name. I could not give that name to
one, however peerless in herself, of whom the world would say, 'But
for her marriage she would have been a singer on the stage!' I will own
more: the fancy I conceived for the first fair face, other fair faces
have dispelled. At this moment, however, I have no thought of marriage;
and having known the anguish of struggle, the privations of poverty, I
would ask no woman to share the hazard of my return to them. You might
present me, then, safely to this beautiful Italian,--certain, indeed,
that I should be her admirer; equally certain that I could not become
your rival."

There was something in this speech that jarred upon Graham's sensitive
pride; but on the whole, he felt relieved, both in honour and in heart.
After a few more words, the two young men shook hands and parted. Alain
remounted his horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant
fiacre, and directed the driver to Isaura's villa.

CHAPTER IX.

ISAURA.

The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at her window, gazing dreamily
on the rose-hued clouds that made the western borderland between earth
and heaven. On the table before her lay a few sheets of manuscript
hastily written, not yet reperused. That restless mind of hers had left
its trace on the manuscript.

It is characteristic perhaps of the different geniu