"Ay, honorable. You were growing too dear to me, and I could not speak of marriage to you." There was a long pause. She was standing against one of the cypress-trees, the moon, through an opening above, casting its light upon her pure face, down which were coursing tears of anguish. "So henceforth we must be brother and sister," he whispered.
"Brother and sister," she repeated, in a moaning voice, pressing the cold tree against her aching temples.
"After awhile, Gina, when time shall have tamed our feelings down. Until then, we may not meet."
"Not meet!" she exclaimed, startled by the words into sudden pain. "Will you never come to see us? Shall we never be together again—like brother and sister, as you have just said?"
"Nay, Gina, I must not do so great wrong to the Lady Adelaide."
"So great wrong!" she exclaimed in amazement.
"Not real wrong, I am aware. But I shall undertake at the altar to love and cherish her; and though I cannot do the one, I will the other. Knowing this, it is incumbent on me to be doubly careful of her feelings."
"I see, I see," interrupted the young lady, indignantly; "her feelings must be respected whilst mine—Farewell, Giovanni."
"One word yet, Gina," he said, detaining her. "You will probably hear of me much—foremost in the chase, gayest in the ballroom, last at the banquet—the gay, fortunate Lord of Visinara; and when you do so, remember that that gay lord wears about him a secret chain, suspected by and known to none—a chain, some links of which will remain entwined around his heart to his dying day, though the gilding that made it precious must from this time moulder away. Know you what the chain is, Gina?"
The suffocating sobs were rising in her throat, and she made no answer.