tedness to speak to you
as I ought. I would not wish to be unkind, nor would I yet deceive you.
This cannot be."

"Cannot be, Mary?"

"Do not ask me more now. You are too generous to give pain: spare me,
then, the suffering of inflicting it on you. I will tell you my reasons,
you shall own them to be sufficient."

"When are we to meet again?" said Roland, as he moved slowly towards the
door.

"There it is again!" cried she, in a voice of actual terror; and
Cashel opened the window and sprang out; but even the slight delay in
unfastening the sash prevented his overtaking the intruder, whoever
he might be, while, in the abundance of evergreens about, search was
certain to prove fruitless.

"Good-bye," said she, endeavoring to smile; "you are too proud and high
of spirit, if I read you aright, to return to a theme like this."

"I am humble enough to sue it out,--a very suppliant," said he,
passionately.

"I thought otherwise of you," said she, affecting a look of
disappointment.

"Think of me how you will, so that you know I love you," cried he,
pressing his lips to her hand; and then, half-maddened by the conflict
in his mind, he hastened out, and, mounting his horse, rode off, not,
indeed, at the mad speed of his coming, but slowly, and with bent-down
head.

Let a man be ever so little of a coxcomb, the chances are that he will
always explain a refusal of this kind on any ground rather than upon
that of his own unworthiness. It is either a case "of pre-engaged
affection" or some secret influence on the score of family and fortune;
and even this sophistry lends its balm to wounded self-love. Cashel,
unhappily for his peace of mind, had not studied in this school, and
went his way in deep despondency. Like many men who indulge but seldom
in self-examination, he never knew how much his affections were involved
till his proffer of them was refused. Now, for the first time, he
felt that; now recognized what store he placed on her esteem, and how
naturally he had turned from the wearisome dissipations of his own house
to the cheerful happiness of "the cottage." Neither could he divest
himself of the thought that had Mary known him in his early and his only
true character, she might not have refused him, and that he owed his
failure to that mongrel thing which wealth had made him.

"I never was intended for this kind of life," thought he. "I am driven
to absurdities and extravagances to give it any character of in