h."

"Successful sins are unencumbered by penitential oblations, and only
discovered and defeated crimes arouse conscience, and paint one's
cheeks with mortification. General Laurance merely illustrates a
great social law."

"Do not, dear madame, keep me in this fiery suspense. I have offered
you all that a gentleman can lay at the feet of the woman he loves."

A cold smile lighted her face, as some arctic moonbeams gleams for an
instant across the spires and doomes of an iceberg.

"Once you attempted to offer me your heart, or what remains of its
ossified ruins; which I declined. Now you tender me your hand and
name, and indeed it appears that like many of the high-born class you
so nobly represent, your heart and hand have never hitherto been
conjoined in your _devoir_. It were a melancholy pity they should be
eternally divorced."

Bending over her, he exclaimed:

"As heaven hears me, I swear I love you better than life, than
everything else that the broad earth holds! You cannot possibly doubt
my sincerity, for you hold the proof in your own hands. Be merciful,
Odille, and end my anxiety."

He caught her hand, and as she attempted no resistance, he raised it
to his moustached lip. Her eyes were resting upon the blue expanse of
water, as if far away, across the vast vista of the Mediterranean she
sought some strengthening influence, some sacred inspiration; and
after a moment, turning them full upon his countenance, she said with
grave stony composure:

"You have asked me to become your wife, knowing full well that no
affection would prompt me to entertain the thought; and you must be
thoroughly convinced that only sordid motives of policy could
influence me to accept you. Do men who marry under such circumstances
honour and trust the women, who as a _dernier ressort_ bear their
names? You are not so weak, so egregiously vain, as to delude
yourself for one instant with the supposition that I could ever love
you?"

"Once my wife, I ask nothing more. Upon my own head and life, be the
failure to make you love me. Only give me this hand, and I will take
your heart Can a lover ask less, and hazard more?"

"And if you fail--woefully, as fail you must?"

"I shall not. You cannot awe or discourage me, for I have yet to find
the heart that successfully defies my worship. But if you remained
indifferent--ah, loveliest! you would not! Even then, I should be
blessed by your presence, your society--and that alone we