sal. You were made for me and I for you; it is quite
useless for you to resist me, for you must marry me at last. I love
you, and by that right you belong to me. I love you--I love you."

"You--love--me--you----"

"Yes, I do, and why should you look at me like that? I cannot help it,
you are so beautiful; if you knew your loveliness, you would
understand me. I love those grey eyes of yours, even when they flash
and burn as they do now. Ah! they shall look softly at me yet, and
those sweet lips that curl so scornfully shall shape themselves to
kiss me. Listen, I loved you when I first saw you there in the
drawing-room at Isleworth, I loved you more and more all the time that
I was ill, and now I love you to madness. So you see, Angela, you
_must_ marry me soon."

"_I_ marry you!"

"Oh! don't say you won't, for God's sake, don't say you won't," said
George, with a sudden change of manner from the confident to the
supplicatory. "Look, I beg you not to, on my knees," and he actually
flung himself down on the grass roadway and grovelled before her in an
abandonment of passion hideous to behold.

She turned very pale, and answered him in a cold, quiet voice, every
syllable of which fell upon him like the stroke of a knife.

"Such a thing would be quite impossible for many reasons, but I need
only repeat you one that you are already aware of. I am engaged to Mr.
Heigham."

"Bah, that is nothing. I know that; but you will not throw away such a
love as I have to offer for the wavering affection of a boy. We can
soon get rid of him. Write and tell him that you have changed your
mind. Listen, Angela," he went on, catching her by the skirt of her
dress; "he is not rich, he has only got enough for a bare living. I
have five times the money, and you shall help to spend it. Don't marry
a young beggar like that; you won't get value for yourself. It will
pay you ever so much better to marry me."

George was convinced from his experience of the sex that every woman
could be bought if only you bid high enough; but, as the sequel
showed, he could not well have used a worse argument to a person like
Angela, or one more likely to excite the indignation that fear of him,
together with a certain respect for the evident genuineness of his
suffering, had hitherto kept in suppression. She wrenched her dress
free from him, leaving a portion of its fabric in his hand.

"Are you not ashamed?" she said, her voice trembling with indignation