e old channels, if you will be mine. You would not have
thought this condition hard a year ago. What has occurred to change you?
You loved me then--by Heaven you love me still! Oh, say so, Miriam, and
make me doubly blessed! Am I deceived in the expression of that beaming
eye? You will pardon, bless me;" and he knelt humbly at my feet, and
clasped my hand.

"Rise, Claude," I said, "and forgive me if a momentary feeling of
triumph, that may have lit my eye, was mingled with the feeling of
entire emancipation from all past weakness, which this hour so surely
proves, and so satisfactorily, to my own spirit. You are to me like any
other stranger."

He was standing sullenly before me now, his head dropping on his breast,
his hands loosely clasped before him.

"You are deceived," I pursued, calmly, "if you imagine from any
expression of mine that one ray of love survives the ruin of other days.
I told you the truth when I said all was over between us forever. Did
you suppose me a woman to sit down in the ashes because one man--one
woman of all God's manifold creation--had proved false, or treacherous,
or ungrateful? I should have wronged my youth, my soul, my descent, my
God, had I so yielded. Go and fulfill your contract faithfully this
time; a second rupture might not go so well with you as the first. There
are persons who are singularly tenacious of their possessions, and who
number their bondsmen as a principal portion of their property. Beware
how you anger such! Your father too. He would be conciliated now, by
what would once have incensed him. Evelyn Erie is rich, Miriam Monfort
is poor; why need I add another word? The suggestion is perfect."

Coldly, silently, angrily, he left the room. I heard him stamp
impatiently at the hall-door, at some delay apparently in undoing its
fastenings--his childish habit when provoked--such was his haste to be
gone.

Yet I could scarcely judge, from what had just occurred, taking this,
too, in connection with what had passed long before, when I alone was
the injured and forgiving one, that I had drawn down upon my head his
eternal enmity.

But thus it proved.

CHAPTER IX.

Months passed away--months of dreary, monotonous despondency, through
which ran a vein of anxiety that banished peace. During all this time
matters went on pretty much as they had done before, with one exception,
I held no further intercourse with Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Claude was
absent most of thi