eil of proud reserve which conceals the mysteries of a young girl's
heart. I do not love Count Ville-Handry."

Daniel was startled. This confession seemed to him the height of
imprudence.

"I do not love him,--at least not with real love; and I have never
allowed him to hope for such a feeling. Still I shall be most happy to
become his wife. Do not expect me to explain to you what is going on
within me. I myself hardly understand it as yet. I can give no precise
name to that feeling of sympathy which attracts me towards him. I
have been captivated by his wit and his kindness; his words have an
indescribable charm for me. That is all I can tell you."

Daniel could not believe his ears.

"And," she continued, "if you must have motives of more ordinary
character, I will confess to you that I can no longer endure this life,
harassed as I am by vile calumnies. The palace of Count Ville-Handry
appears to me an asylum, where I shall bury my disappointments and my
sorrows, and where I shall find peace and a position which commands
respect. Ah! you need not be afraid for that great and noble name.
I shall bear it worthily and nobly, and shrink from no sacrifice to
enhance its splendor. You may say that I am a calculating woman. I dare
say _I_ am; but I see nothing mean or disgraceful in my hopes."

Daniel had thought he had confounded her, and it was she who crushed
him by her bold frankness; for there was nothing to say, no reasonable
objection to make. Fifty marriages out of every hundred are made upon
less high ground. Miss Brandon, however, was not a woman to be easily
overcome. She rose as she spoke, to her former haughtiness, and inspired
herself with the sound of her voice.

"During the last two years," she said, "I have had twenty offers; and
among them three or four that would have been acceptable to a duchess. I
have refused them, in spite of M. Elgin and Mrs. Brian. Only yesterday,
a man of twenty-five, a Gordon Chalusse, was here at my feet. I have
sent him off like the others, preferring my dear count. And why?"

She remained a moment buried in thought, her eyes swimming in tears;
and, answering apparently her own questions, rather than Daniel's, she
went on,--

"Thanks to my beauty, as the world calls it, a fatal beauty, alas! I
have been admired, courted, filled to satiety with compliments. They say
I am in the most elegant and most polished society in Europe; and yet I
have looked in vain for the man who