"Lady Mar," returned he, "I am incapable of saying anything to you that is inimical to your duty to the best of men.

I will even forget this distressing conversation, and continue through life to revere, equal with himself, the wife of my friend." "And I am to be stabbed with this ?" she replied, in a voice of indignant anguish.
"You are to be healed with it, Lady Mar," returned he, "for it is not a man like the rest of his sex that now addresses you, but a being whose heart is petrified to marble.

I could feel no throb of yours; I should be insensible to all your charms, were I even vile enough to see no evil in trampling upon your husband's rights.

Yes, were virtue lost to me, still memory would speak, still would she urge, that the chaste and last kiss, imprinted by my wife on these lips, should live there in unblemished sanctity, till I again meet her angel embraces in the world to come!" The countess, awed by his solemnity, but not put from her suit, exclaimed: "What she was, I would be to thee--thy consoler, thine adorer.

Time may set me free.