is obliged to
meet certain enquiries by a denial; but you have at your command the
means of immediately clearing the lady. Will you show the letter to her
father?"

There was a perceptible pause, during which Tony, while appearing to
look straight before him, managed to deflect an interrogatory glance
toward Polixena. Her reply was a faint negative motion, accompanied by
unmistakable signs of apprehension.

"Poor girl!" he thought, "she is in a worse case than I imagined, and
whatever happens I must keep her secret."

He turned to the Senator with a deep bow. "I am not," said he, "in the
habit of showing my private correspondence to strangers."

The Count interpreted these words, and Donna Polixena's father, dashing
his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the Marquess
continued to nurse his outraged feelings aloof.

The Count shook his head funereally. "Alas, sir, it is as I feared.
This is not the first time that youth and propinquity have led to fatal
imprudence. But I need hardly, I suppose, point out the obligation
incumbent upon you as a man of honour."

Tony stared at him haughtily, with a look which was meant for the
Marquess. "And what obligation is that?"

"To repair the wrong you have done--in other words, to marry the lady."

Polixena at this burst into tears, and Tony said to himself: "Why in
heaven does she not bid me show the letter?" Then he remembered that it
had no superscription, and that the words it contained, supposing them
to have been addressed to himself, were hardly of a nature to disarm
suspicion. The sense of the girl's grave plight effaced all thought of
his own risk, but the Count's last words struck him as so preposterous
that he could not repress a smile.

"I cannot flatter myself," said he, "that the lady would welcome this
solution."

The Count's manner became increasingly ceremonious. "Such modesty," he
said, "becomes your youth and inexperience; but even if it were
justified it would scarcely alter the case, as it is always assumed in
this country that a young lady wishes to marry the man whom her father
has selected."

"But I understood just now," Tony interposed, "that the gentleman
yonder was in that enviable position."

"So he was, till circumstances obliged him to waive the privilege in
your favour."

"He does me too much honour; but if a deep sense of my unworthiness
obliges me to decline--"

"You are still," interrupted the Count, "labouring