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"Oh,
darling!" and he groaned inwardly, "I cannot put you to the test; I
_cannot_ speak yet;" and he must not. All this poor Lionel thought, as
with folded arms he listened to the Spaniard, and to his concluding
words of "Are you anything to Mademoiselle Vernon?" he merely bowed.
The temptation to dismiss this smooth-tongued Southerner, with the
warmth of the south in his words, with the looks of an Adonis, ere
Vaura should listen to his pleadings, was too much for him. Ah, well,
though we love him much, this Lionel Trevalyon, he is only mortal.
"After I have made her love me, I shall tell her of this man's
proposal of marriage," he said to his aggrieved conscience. After all
is there not an instinctive leaning in the hearts of most of us
towards the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance? Immediately on our
conscience becoming seared as with a red-hot iron through some act its
sensitiveness shrinks from, we, feeling this inward shrinking away as
if from our lower nature invariably bring out the whip and lash our
poor weak flesh by way of atonement.


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