“Are you not engaged to him?” asked Xerxes eagerly.
“Yes: but since he has joined the Christians, I have been thinking of breaking it off. He has become too solemn to suit me.”
“O, if you will only give me the slightest grounds for hope, this town would be the dearest spot on earth to me. Tell me that I may try to win you, and I will be raised at once from the very depths of despair to the pinnacle of felicity.”
Xerxes had used this very expression at least a dozen times to different damsels, but he now spoke it with all the freshness of a first utterance, and it had the same effect upon Clara as if it had been the spontaneous outgush of a sentiment struggling to find vent in suitable language. Subsequent events will show what reply Clara made.
Ernest could not be blind to the frequency of Xerxes’ visits, and he determined to put an end to them by a marriage at an early day as he could prevail upon Clara to appoint. He had not doubted her constancy, but since the ball he dreaded the consequences of the comparisons between himself and his rival, which it was but natural the young lady should institute. Accordingly, the next time he called, he directed the conversation to their engagement, and said earnestly:
“I hope, my dear Clara, you will appoint the day for our union. This you have not yet done. You have only said it would be in the next few weeks, which is indefinite. I can see no use in waiting longer. Please make the day as near in the future as possible.”
Clara’s beautiful face at once assumed an expression of ominous seriousness but she spoke promptly and directly:
“I am thinking of asking you to release me from that hasty engagement.”
Ernest turned pale. He made no attempt to conceal his amazement and anguish. For a moment he sat as if petrified, or as if he did not clearly understand her. Surely she could not mean what these words signified: he could not believe it, for did she not love him? Why break the engagement? O, she must be tantalizing him for sport—yes, that was all. He would humor this pleasantry. Then he tried to smile, but it was an expressionless distortion of his face. “You want a divorce, do you?” he asked in a husky voice. “Well, that will be hard to get.”
“I said nothing about a divorce,” she replied in a cold manner.