"No; but vexed. I have not time now to relate to you all that passed, liable as we are to interruption. I told him that the passion which had arisen between us was not of will--that I had not purposely placed myself in your path to gain your love--that we had been thrown together by circumstances, and thus it had arisen. I pointed out that no blame could by any possibility attach to you, though it might be due to me; for I did not deny that when I saw an attachment was growing up between us, I might have flown before it was irrevocably planted, and did not."
"Did you part in anger?" she asked.
"On the contrary. M. de Castella is anxious to treat the affair as a jest, and hinted that it might be dropped as such. I do believe he considers it one, for he asked me to dinner."
"Frederick! You will surely come?"
"I shall come, Adeline, for your sake."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a shiver, "how will it end?"
"My dearest," he said earnestly, "you must be calm. Fear nothing, now I am by you. Rely upon it, you shall be my wife."
"Mr. St. John," cried Rose, as they went into the west drawing-room, "you have brought some music for me, a writing-case for Mary Carr, but what have you brought for Adeline?"
"Myself," he quietly answered.
"There's many a true word spoken in jest," said Rose, with a laugh. "You don't think you have been taking me in all this time, Mr. St. John, with your letters to Mary Carr, and her envelopes back again? Bah! pas si bête."