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Half-bewildered, he looked from one to the other of us all; but no one spoke, no one contradicted him. Edwin, his passion quite gone, stooped in a sorrowful and humble way to pick up his betrothed's letter. Then Guy flew at him, and caught him by the collar. "You coward! how dared you? No, I won't hurt him; she is fond of him. Go away, every one of you. Oh, mother, mother, mother!"

Although Traugott, whose mind had never been stirred by so many wonderful and extraordinary things as to-day, would very much have liked to escape the company, he could not contrive it; for, just as he was going out of the door, without having even kissed his betrothed's hand, Herr Elias caught him by the coat-tails, crying, "My honoured son-in-law, my good colleague, but you're not going to leave us?"

Perhaps the love for her betrothed had so permeated her whole being that she shed an exquisitely fascinating sweetness all about. He was to her as if he had been her betrothed's younger brother. And when the engagement was confessed he allowed himself no reprehensible longing for the woman so soon to be another's.

'The sum that you will inherit, nephew, amounts in all to about five thousand gold pesos, or perhaps twelve thousand of your English pounds, enough for a young man to begin life on, even with a wife. Indeed there in England it may well be held a great fortune, and I think that your betrothed's father will make no more objection to you as a son-in-law.

From the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that would be; and, though he was more than ever determined to "see the thing through," he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his betrothed's cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera. Welland and her daughter standing near the ball-room door.

But Theo was at Markland, alternating between the Paradiso and the Inferno, between the sweetness of his betrothed's company and all the hard conditions of his happiness, and the Warren was in the hands of a set of leisurely country tradespeople, who if Theo had meant to carry his bride there must have postponed that happiness for a year or two not much wonder, perhaps, since they were left by the young master to dawdle on their own way.

Hesitations and agonising doubts of his betrothed's purity had vanished with the night, and, instead of the dread that her child would be the offspring of shame, had come a divinely given certainty that it was 'a holy thing. In the rush of the sudden revulsion, all that was involved would not be clear, but the duty that lay nearest him was clear, and his obedience was as swift as it was glad.

Sailors and their wives crowded around Wilkie's "Chelsea Pensioners," when first exhibited; French soldiers enjoy the minutiae of Vernet's battle-pieces; a lover can judge of his betrothed's miniature; and the most unrefined sportsman will point out the niceties of breed in one of Landseer's dogs.

And why should she interpose, if Elsa desired to talk to the Countess von Sempach? I leaned over the arm of my betrothed's chair. They were talking of common affairs. From where I was I could not see Elsa's face, so I moved and stood leaning on a third chair between them. The Countess was gay and brilliant; kind also, with a tenderness that seemed to throw out feelers for friendship.

"Ay," said she; "but meantime prithee give me linen to hem, or work to do; for the time hangs on me like lead." Her betrothed's eye brightened at this housewifely request, and he brought her up two dozen flagons of various sizes to clean and polish. She gathered complacency as she reflected that by a strange turn of fortune all this bright pewter was to be hers.