A Heart-Song of To-day by Savigny, Annie Gregg

This had been, to say the least of it, a very trying night for Lionel--and it seemed his troubles were not yet over. He knew the Marquis Del Castello to be a _parti_ the bluest blood in his own land would be more than satisfied with. He was the possessor of a noble and princely estate, and this man, with all these advantages, was a suitor for the hand of the woman he loved with an overwhelming passion. And the Spaniard had said she could not be loved as he loved her. Ah, well! what does man know of man? Only this, what he chooses more than "language," as Talleyrand says, "was given us to conceal our thoughts;" for we smile when the heart is breaking; we weep to conceal the joy we are feeling; and Lionel listened and suffered. He had never been a man to make his moan into the ear of men and women, for the sympathy of society is curiosity! and man listens and forgets, and woman listens and talks; she cannot help it, poor thing. Can the snake do other than charm--then sting?

And Vaura had conquered and enslaved him, but was still unsubdued--so he thought,--and though peerless among her sex, she is only a woman. And how will it be if I allow this man to pour his love tale into her ear with all the impassioned eloquence his countrymen possess. "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. And so Lionel thought now as he bowed to Del Castello's question of "are you anything to her?" and thought while doing what hurt his conscience--"I shall tell her after."

"Then my worst fears are realized," said Del Castello to Lionel's bow. "But, Monsieur, you cannot expect me with my heart's great loneliness fresh upon me to congratulate you on being before me in your wooing. _Adieu_, I shall leave Paris at sunrise, and it will be a sorrowful gratification to me to know that the incomparable Mlle. Vernon will, from your lips, learn why I fly." And saying this, the Marquis left Lionel to the solitude of Madame's boudoir.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE BLIND GOD TAKES SURE AIM.