can only say
that I grieve for you."

She listened in silence; then rising from her chair, said, with a
gesture infinitely tragic in its simplicity:

"Then it is finished; before God and man I renounce him. Listen," she
went on, turning to her father-in-law, "I loved your son, he won my
heart; but, though he said he loved me, I suspected him of playing
fast and loose with me, on the one hand, and with my friend, Maria
Lee, on the other. So I determined to go away, and told him so. Then
it was that he offered to marry me at once, if I would change my
purpose. I loved him, and I consented--yes, because I loved him so, I
consented to even more. I agreed to keep the marriage secret from you.
You see what it has led to. I, a Von Holtzhausen, and the last of my
name, stand here a byword and a scorn; my story will be found amusing
at every dinner-table in the country-side, and my shame will even
cling to my unborn child. This is the return he has made me for my
sacrifice of self-respect, and for consenting to marry him at all; to
outrage my love and make me a public mockery."

"We have been accustomed," broke in the old squire, his pride somewhat
nettled, "to consider our own a good family to marry into. You do not
seem to share that view."

"Good; yes, there is plenty of your money for those who care for it;
but, sir, as I told your son, it is not a _family_. He did me no
honour in marrying me, though I was nothing but a German companion,
with no dower but her beauty. I,"--and here she flung her head back
with an air of ineffable pride--"did him the honour. My ancestors,
sir, were princes, when his were plough-boys."

"Well, well," answered the old man, testily, "ten generations of
country gentry, and the Lord only knows how many more of stout yeomen
before them, is a good enough descent for us; but I like your pride,
and I am glad that you spring from an ancient race. You have been
shamefully treated, Hilda--is not your name Hilda?--but there are
others, more free from blame than you are, who have been treated
worse."

"Ah, Maria! then she knows nothing?"

"Yes, there is Maria and myself. But never mind that. Philip will, I
suppose, be back in a few hours--oh, yes! he will be back," and his
eyes glinted unpleasantly, "and what shall you do then? what course do
you intend to take?"

"I intend to claim my rights, to force him to acknowledge me here
where he suffered his engagement to another woman to be proclaimed,