; yes, grieved beyond measure, Odalite."

This, and much more to the same purpose, was strongly and persistently
urged by the mother, until Odalite, frightened, distressed and overwhelmed
by her vehemence, earnestness and persistence, fell half conquered at the
lady's feet, with the cry that opened this story:

"Mother! oh, mother! it will break my heart!"

Yet not for that would the lady yield. And not for that did she pause. But
after more caressings, more persuasion, and more arguments--seeing that
nothing less than the knowledge of the dread secret which had blighted her
own bright youth could ever win Odalite to consent to the only sacrifice
through which that secret would be kept--the mother, as has been already
told, drew her daughter off to the seclusion of her own bedchamber, where
they remained shut up for two hours.

At the end of that time Odalite came out alone, looking, oh! so changed,
as if the bright and blooming girl of sixteen had suddenly become a sad
and weary woman.

With her face pale and drawn, her forehead puckered into painful furrows,
her eyes red and sunken, her lips shrunken down at the corners, her head
bent, her form bowed, her steps feeble, she went like a woman walking in
her sleep, straight down the stairs, down the hall and through the front
door to the piazza, where she found Col. Anglesea walking slowly up and
down the floor and smoking.

At her approach he threw away his cigar and turned to meet her, eager
expectation on his face.

She went and stood before him, and said, with a strange, cold steadiness:

"Col. Anglesea, I have come to tell you that you may go to my father and
ask his permission for you to marry me. You may also say to him, from me,
that I hope he will give his consent, because--it will be a fiendish
falsehood; but never mind that; you can tell it--because the marriage will
secure my happiness."

CHAPTER IX

SUITOR AND FATHER

When Odalite had signified her acceptance of the suit of Anglesea,
although she had expressed herself in not too flattering language, the
gallant colonel would have assumed the role of a favored lover and
advanced to embrace her; but she lifted both hands and turned away her
head with a look of repulsion calculated to cool the ardor of the warmest
suitor, as she cried, sternly:

"Stand back! Do not dare to lay a finger on me! I do not belong to you! I
am not yet your property! You are not my owner! You have not received my