est."

"By Heaven!" exclaimed Lord Ulswater, utterly beside himself with rage
which, suppressed at the beginning of Lady Westborough's speech, had
been kindled into double fury by its conclusion, "you will not suffer
Lady Flora, no, nor any one but her affianced bridegroom, her only
legitimate defender, to answer this arrogant intruder! You cannot think
that her hand, the hand of my future wife, shall trace line or word to
one who has so insulted her with his addresses and me with his rivalry."

"Man!" cried Clarence, abruptly, and seizing Lord Ulswater fiercely by
the arm, "there are some causes which will draw fire from ice: beware,
beware how you incense me to pollute my soul with the blood of a--"

"What!" exclaimed Lord Ulswater.

Clarence bent down and whispered one word in his ear.

Had that word been the spell with which the sorcerers of old disarmed
the fiend, it could not have wrought a greater change upon Lord
Ulswater's mien and face. He staggered back several paces, the glow
of his swarthy cheek faded into a deathlike paleness; the word which
passion had conjured to his tongue died there in silence; and he stood
with eyes dilated and fixed on Clarence's face, on which their gaze
seemed to force some unwilling certainty.

But Linden did not wait for him to recover his self-possession: he
hurried after Lady Westborough, who, with her daughter, was hastening
home.

"Pardon me, Lady Westborough," he said, as he approached, with a tone
and air of deep respect, "pardon me; but will you suffer me to hope that
Lady Flora and yourself will, in a moment of greater calmness, consider
over all I have said? and-that she--that you, Lady Flora" (added
he, changing the object of his address), "will vouchsafe one line of
unprejudiced, unbiased reply, to a love which, however misrepresented
and calumniated, has in it, I dare to say, nothing that can disgrace
her to whom, with an enduring constancy, and undimmed, though unhoping,
ardour, it has been inviolably dedicated?"

Lady Flora, though she spoke not, lifted her eyes to his; and in that
glance was a magic which made his heart burn with a sudden and flashing
joy that atoned for the darkness of years.

"I assure you, sir," said Lady Westborough, touched, in spite of
herself, with the sincerity and respect of Clarence's bearing, "that
Lady Flora will reply to any letter of explanation or proposal: for
myself, I will not even see her answer. Where shall it be sent