Despite the warning sounds, which at the moment smote on
her soul so ominously, Marian went down the steps leading
from the little porch into the garden, although her steps faltered,
and her heart beat violently between fear and expectation,
and the consciousness that she was acting wrongly. Before
she had advanced, however, ten paces, round the corner
of the hall, into the grove of sycamores, wherein the shadows
fell dark and heavy over the gravel-walk which threaded it,
she was joined by Ernest de Vaux.

He appeared, at the moment, to be little less agitated than
she was herself; his countenance, even to the lips, was ashy
pale, and she could see that he trembled, and it was owing,
perhaps, to this very visible embarrassment on his part, that
Marian felt less forcibly the extreme impropriety, if not indelicacy,
of her own conduct.

Had he come to meet her, confident, proud, and evidently

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exhilarated by the success of his machinations, it is possible
that her modesty would have been offended; that she would
have discovered the danger she was running, and withdrawn,
ere it was yet too late, for happiness or honor.

But, as it was, when she saw the man she loved, coming to
meet her, wan and agitated, timid, and with the trace of tears
on his pallid cheeks, a sense of pity rose in her bosom, and
lent its aid to the pleadings of that deceptive advocate within
her soul, which needed no assistance in his favor.

Still, as she met him, there was an air of dignity, and self-restraint,
and maidenly reserve about her, that went some little
way at least to screen her from the consequences of her exceeding
indiscretion; and when she addressed him — for it was
she who spoke the first — it was in a voice far cooler, and more
resolute, than the mind which suggested and informed it.

“I trust,” she said, “my Lord de Vaux, that you have good
and sufficient cause for the strange request which you made
me at our last interview; some cause, I mean, sir, that may
justify you, in requiring a lady to meet you thus clandestinely,
and alone, and her in consenting to do so. There has been so
much strange and mysterious, my lord, in your whole conduct
and demeanor, from the first to the last; and that mystery —
if not deceit — has wrought effects so baleful on my sister's
happiness, that I confess I have hoped you may have something
to communicate that may, in some degree, palliate your
own motives, which now seem so evil; and repair the positive
evil which you have done her. It is on this consideration only,
that I have consented to give you a hearing. It is in this
trust only, that I have taken a step, which I fear me is unmaidenly
and wrong in itself — but it is by my motives that my conduct
must be judged; and I know those to be honorable and
correct. Now, my lord, may it please you to speak quickly
that you have got to say; but let me caution you, that I hear

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no addresses, nor receive any pleadings, meant for my own ear—
one such word, and I leave you. Speak, my lord!”

“You are considerate, ever, dear young lady,” replied
Ernest de Vaux, in tones of deep respect, not drawing very
near her, nor offering to take her hand, nor tendering any of
those customary familiarities, which, though perfectly natural
at any other time, might, under present circumstances, have
had the effect of alarming her, and checking her freedom of
demeanor.

“You are considerate, ever, dear young lady! and I
am bold to say it, your confidence is not misplaced, nor shall
your trust be deceived!”

“I do not know,” answered Marian, “I do not know, my
lord! It is for you to show that; at present, appearances are
much against you; nor do I see what explanation you can make,
that shall exonerate you. But to the point, my lord, to the
point!”

“None, Miss Hawkwood — none! I have no explanations
that I can make, which shall exonerate —”

“Then why,” she interrupted him, warmly and energetically,
“why have you brought me hither? or to what do you expect
that I shall listen? — not methinks, to a traitor's love-tale.”

“Which shall exonerate me — I would have said,” De Vaux
resumed, as quickly as she left off speaking, “had you permitted
me — from the grossest and most blind folly — hallucination—
madness! — Yes! I believe I have been mad.”

“Madness, my lord,” exclaimed Marian, “is very apt to be
the plea of some people for doing just whatsoever they think
fit — without regard to principle or honor, to the feelings of
their fellow-creatures, or to the good opinion of the world. I
trust it is not so with you; but I, for one, have never seen
aught in your conduct that was incompatible with the most sound
and serious sanity.”

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

“I hardly know how I may speak to you without offence,
dear Mistress Marian. My object, in requesting you to hear
a few last words from a very wretched, and very penitent man,
arose from a painful yearning to stand pardoned, if not justified,
in the eyes of one being at least, of this family, to whom I owe
so much, and by whom I am now so grievously misapprehended.”

“Then I was right!” answered Marian, joyously, and her
eye sparkled for a moment, and her pale cheek flushed crimson;
“then you have some excuse to offer — well! my lord,
well. It was in hopes of hearing such, that I came hither —
there can be no offence to me in that — I shall be very glad to
hear that one of whom I have thought well, is worthy of such
estimation.”

“But to prove that,” he answered, in a soft, low voice, “I
must enter upon a history; I must speak to you of things that
passed long ago — of things that passed at York!”

“My lord!” and she started back, a brief spark of indignation
gleaming in her bright eyes, “my lord!”

“Nay,” he replied, humbly and sadly, “if you forbid me to
speak, I am silent; but by no means can I exculpate myself,
but by naming these things; and I asseverate to you by the
earth and the heavens, and all that they contain! — I swear to
you, by Him who made them all! that, if you deign to hear
me, I have a perfect and complete defence against all but the
charge of folly. And, as you hope for happiness yourself, here
or hereafter, I do conjure you to hear me!”

“Your promises are very strong, my lord; and your adjuration
such, that I may not refuse to listen to you.”

“I must speak to you of yourself, lady!”

“Of myself?”

“Ay! of yourself — for you, Marian Hawkwood, are the
cause, the sole cause of everything that has appeared inconsistent,
base, or guilty, on my part!”

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

“I! my lord — I! — I the cause of your inconsistency, your
guilt, your baseness!” she cried, indignantly. “Prove it, prove
it; but I defy you,” she added, more calmly, and with a scornful
intonation of voice: “you know that all this is words —
words — false and empty words! Now, sir, speak out at once,
or I leave you — better it were, perhaps, had I never come at all!”

Better, indeed! Alas! poor Marian, that your own words
should be so terribly prophetic, that your one fault should have
so sealed and stamped your life with the impression of remorse
and sorrow. For Ernest de Vaux had now gained his end, he
had so stimulated and excited her curiosity, and through her
curiosity, her interest, that she was now prepared, nay, eager,
to listen to words, which, a little while before, she would have
shrunk from hearing. And he perceived the advantage he had
gained — for all his seeming agitation and embarrassment were
but consummate acting, and made himself ready to profit by it
to the utmost.

“You can not but remember lady,” he resumed, artfully,
adopting the unconcerned tone of a mere narrator, “the day
when I first saw you at the high-sheriff's ball?”

“I do not know, my lord, what very charming memories I
have to fix the time or place, upon my mind, of an event by no
means striking or delightful; was it at the high-sheriff's ball?—
it might have been, doubtless; for I was there — and if you
say it was, I do not doubt that you are quite right.”

But this affected unconcern, this little stratagem of poor Marian,
availed her nothing with De Vaux; for he saw through it
in a moment. He knew instinctively and instantly, that it was
affected — and more, the affectation convinced him that there
was something that she would conceal; and what that something
was, his consummate knowledge of the female heart informed
him readily. But he replied, as if he was taken in by
her artifice.

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

“It is fortunate for you,” he said, “that you can forget so
easily — would to God that I had been able to do likewise;
but if you have forgotten the time and the place, I can not believe
that you have as speedily forgotten the deep and evident
impression which your charms made upon me — my eagerness
to gain your acquaintance — my constant and assiduous attentions—
in short, the deep and ardent passion with which you
had filled my very soul, from the first hour of our meeting.”

“Indeed!” she replied, very scornfully and coldly, “you do
far too much honor to my penetration. I never once suspected
anything of the kind; nor do I even now conjecture what motive
can impel you to feign, what, I believe, never had an existence
in reality.”

“You must have been blind, indeed, lady, as blind as I was
myself. And yet you can not deny that my eye dwelt on you;
followed you everywhere — that I danced with you constantly,
with you alone, and that when I danced not with you, I waited
ever nigh you, to catch one glance from your eye, one
murmur from your sweet voice. You can not but have noticed
this!”

“And if I did, my lord — and if I did, ladies of birth and station
do not imagine that every young man, who likes to dance
with them, and talk soft nonsense to them, who perhaps thinks
them pretty enough, or witty enough, to while away a tedious
hour in the country, is in love with them, any more than they
wish gentlemen to flatter themselves, that they have yielded up
their hearts, because they condescend to be amused by lively
conversation, or even flattered by attentions, which they receive
as things of course!”

“And did you so receive — did you so think of my attentions?”

“Upon my word, my lord, I don't remember that I thought
anything at all about them, that I perceived them even! But

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your self-justification is taking a strange turn. To what is all
this tending, I beseech you?”

“To this, Marian Hawkwood, that when I saw you daily,
nightly, at York, I loved you with the whole passionate and
violent devotion of a free, honest heart — that I endeavored by
all means in my power, by the most eager and assiduous devotion,
by all those nameless indescribable attentions, which we
are taught to believe that women prize above all things—”

“Women are much obliged to you, my lord, upon my word!”
she interrupted him.

“To let you perceive,” he continued, as if he had not heard
her, “to make you understand how I adored you; and I believed
that I had not been unsuccessful — I believed more, that you
both saw, and appreciated, and returned my love, Marian!”

“Did you, indeedl” she replied, with a bitter expression of
haughtiness and scorn. “Did you, indeed, believe so? Then
you were, in the first place, very unhappily mistaken; and, in
the second place, egregiously misled by your vain self-conceit.”

“I believe not. Mistress Marian, ladies are generally sufficiently
clear-sighted in matters that concern the heart, especially
when men endeavor to make those matters evident to
them. I did so, and you received my attentions with very evident
gratification. I do not now believe that you are in the
least a coquette — though I did think so for a time — besides, I
know that you love me now.”

“Love you!” she replied, with a burst of fiery indignation,
“nay! but I hate, scorn, loathe, detest you!” and she gave way
in a moment, to a paroxysm of violent and hysterical weeping;
staggered back to a garden-chair; and sank into it; and lay
there with her head drooping upon her breast, the big tears
rolling down her cheeks, heavy and fast as summer's rain, and
her heart throbbing and bounding as if it would break from her
bosom.

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