"Certainly not, my child," answered Colonel de St. Severan. "I promised not to ask for one until then. I cannot help hoping, however, that so charming and virtuous a young man as Comte Charles has succeeded in making you feel how much happier you will be as his honoured wife than in rejecting him and yielding to unauthorised recollections of a married man, as no doubt Lord Barkley is by this time. Nevertheless, Marie, you know that you are free to act as you will. I do not desire you under pain of my displeasure to accept him; but I shall be sorry if it be otherwise, and a little disappointed in my dear child." He laid his hand fondly on her head, whilst she struggled to keep down the sobs which were rising in her throat.
Just then a servant entered with some letters on a salver. Colonel de St. Severan took them up, read the addresses, and placing before Marie an unusually large envelope, he said gaily, "There, little one, is a volume from your nice Irish friend. Just look how thick it is, too! Why, it will give you something to do to read all that. And I, too, must see what my correspondents have to say to me."
Not many minutes had passed when Colonel de St. Severan was startled by a joyful cry from Marie. "I am saved—saved—what joy!—what happiness! Read, mon père." In her right hand she held up before him Flora's open letter, and in her left another, upon which she gazed with rapture. But the reaction was too great for Marie's strength, and she burst into so violent a fit of crying that Colonel de St. Severan was obliged to take her into the house before even he had time to read a line of the letter which had caused all this extraordinary agitation; but he guessed that in some way or other it must be connected with Lord Barkley, and the very thought of it enraged him.
Madame de St. Severan happened to be passing through the hall as they entered, and Colonel de St. Severan hastily consigned Marie to her care, and shut himself up in his study. By the same post Flora wrote to Marie and Colonel de St. Severan, enclosing Lord Barkley's respective letters to each of them; but the one addressed to Colonel de St. Severan, being mixed up among several other letters, had escaped his notice until he read her note to Marie, in which she spoke of having also written to him. He then eagerly looked for it, and, having found it, tore open the envelope and read her letter and Lord Barkley's as attentively as his increasing indignation would allow him.
Lord Barkley's letter was so frank and open in its acknowledgment of past unworthiness, and so humble in its appeal for forgiveness, that Flora hoped it might soften Colonel de St. Severan's anger towards him; and her own letter closed with these words—"You cannot any longer doubt Lord Barkley's love for Marie. Think what it must have cost a man like him, and in his position, to humble himself as he has done both to you and Mr. Molyneux; yet he did it for her sake. And I need not say that she loves him. You know it well, since you thought, when he was engaged to another, that she was bound to guard even against the memory of that love by making a marriage of duty, to say the least of it. Dreadful as it appeared to me that she should be induced to marry in this way, I forced myself to be silent until I learned that he whom she loved was free, and ready to make any atonement in order to obtain her hand. So now, dear Colonel de St. Severan, I hope you will pardon me for becoming Lord Barkley's mediatrix. Marie needs no intercessor with you; your own deep affection for her will be a far more powerful advocate in favour of her happiness than anything which I could say. It will not let you see her suffer very long when you know that it is in your power to make her happy by forgiving her lover and receiving him as your adopted son-in-law."
Colonel de St. Severan, however, passionately declared in his own mind, when he finished reading these letters, that he would never consent to give Marie to a man who had treated her as Lord Barkley had done. Repentance came too late; and, so far as he was concerned, he would sternly reject him. He was just about to write a few chilling lines to Flora, re-enclosing Lord Barkley's letter, and expressing his astonishment that he should have had the presumption to address him, when he was called away on business which obliged him to absent himself from home for a few hours.
When he returned he was met at the door by Marie, who, all radiant with joy, threw herself into his arms, and gaily whispered, mimicking his words in the morning, "Now, mon père, I am quite ready to make you all happy by allowing my fiançailles to be celebrated as soon as you will. I will not even claim the fulfilment of your promise to wait for my answer until my birthday. See what a difference a name makes; now that I may be affianced to Edmund instead of to Charles, I ask for no delay. Ah! how happy I am!"
"Marie! I am ashamed of you!" exclaimed Colonel de St. Severan, pushing her from him. "If you had the slightest sense of maidenly dignity you would consider it an insult that Lord Barkley should dare to address you again, instead of showing this unseemly joy and of heedlessly rejecting the honour of becoming the Comte Charles de Morlaix's wife in order to give yourself to one who cast you off! But I will save you if I can. By this post I shall send back Lord Barkley's letter to Miss Adair, requesting that the subject may never be named to me again."
This was a sad check to Marie, to whom the possibility of his not forgiving her lover had never occurred. She only thought of all he had suffered, and longed to be able to console him and make him forget the unhappy past. But Colonel de St. Severan's words rudely dispelled this delicious dream, and the only concession which her prayers and tears could win from him was a promise that he would not send Lord Barkley's letter back to him; but he persisted in writing to Flora, and begged of her to convey to her friend, Lord Barkley, his decided refusal even to tolerate the idea of his becoming Marie's husband, and, as a favour, he asked Flora not in any way to encourage Marie in this misplaced affection.
Colonel de St. Severan allowed Marie to see the letter, and even consented that she should add a few lines. She accordingly wrote, with trembling fingers—"Tell Edmund, dearest Flora, that I have forgiven and forgotten everything but his love for me; and would—so gladly!—prove to him how fully it is returned by giving myself to him at once. But, as you see from the above, my dear father refuses his consent to our marriage; and I could not be so ungrateful as to marry in the face of his prohibition. I will never, however, marry any one else. Thank God! they cannot persuade me now that it is wrong to love him; and if he thinks me worth waiting for, we may yet be happy. My dear father, I feel sure, is too fond of me not to relent at last. Pray, then, ma Flore, for thy Mignonne!"