eason why you refused so many excellent offers?" he
inquired, with a smile.

"Perhaps that was the reason," she replied, lowly bending her head.

"Tell me more, my consolation! I thirst for your words; they are as the
words of life to me," he murmured, eagerly.

She continued, still speaking in a low, thrilling voice:

"At last--at last--at last--after three long years of waiting, longing,
aspiring, I met you face to face. Oh!" she exclaimed, and as she spoke
her hand for the first time went out to meet his, which closed upon it
with a close clasp, and her eyes lifted themselves to his in a full
blaze of love that seemed to blend their spirits into one.

"Oh! if in that moment you loved me, it must have been because you read
my soul, for in that moment I consecrated my life to you for acceptance
or rejection. I recorded a vow in heaven to be no man's wife unless
I could be yours; but to live unmarried so that when, in the course of
nature, my dear father should pass to the higher life and leave me Castle
Lone, I might be free to transfer it to its rightful owner."

"Ah! my beloved! you would have been capable of such an act of
renunciation as that! But I could not have accepted the sacrifice,
Salome."

"In that case I should have made a will and bequeathed it to you, and
then prayed to the Lord to take me from the earth, that you might have it
all the sooner. But let that pass. Thanks be to Heaven, there is no need
of that. It would have been sweet to die for you, but it is so much
sweeter to _live_ for you, dearest!" she said, lifting up a face
in which rosy blushes, radiant smiles, and beaming eyes were blended in
dazzling beauty.

"Oh! angel of my destiny, what can I render you for all the blessings you
have brought me?" exclaimed her lover, clasping her to his bosom in a
close embrace.

"Your love--your love! which will crown me a queen among women!" she
whispered, softly.

The morning succeeding this scene, Lord Arondelle called and asked for
a private interview with Sir Lemuel Levison.

He was invited up into the library, where he found the banker alone among
his books.

"Good morning, Arondelle. Glad to see you. Take this chair," said the old
gentleman, rising, shaking hands with his visitor, and placing a seat for
him.

The young marquis returned the hearty shake of the banker's hand, and
took the offered chair.

"Now, I suppose that you have come to tell me that you have taken up the
girl I f