Raoul found the duke engaged in endeavoring to encourage Miss Grafton.
"Tell him to remain, I implore you!" said Buckingham to Mary.
"No, I will tell him to go," replied Miss Grafton, with returning animation; "I am not one of those women who have more pride than heart; if she whom he loves is in France, let him return thither and bless me for having advised him to go and seek his happiness there.

If, on the contrary, she shall have ceased to love him, let him come back here again; I shall still love him, and his unhappiness will not have lessened him in my regard.

In the arms of my house you will find that which Heaven has engraven on my heart--_Habenti parum, egenti cuncta_.
'To the rich is accorded little, to the poor everything.'" "I do not believe, Bragelonne, that you will find yonder the equivalent of what you leave behind you here." "I think, or at least hope," said Raoul, with a gloomy air, "that she whom I love is worthy of my affection; but if it be true she is unworthy of me, as you have endeavored to make me believe, I will tear her image from my heart, duke, even if my heart breaks in the attempt." Mary Grafton gazed upon him with an expression of the most indefinable pity, and Raoul returned her look with a sweet, sorrowful smile, saying, "Mademoiselle, the diamond which the king has given me was destined for you,--give me leave to offer it for your acceptance: if I marry in France, you will send it me back; if I do not marry, keep it." And he bowed and left her.
"What does he mean ?" thought Buckingham, while Raoul pressed Mary's icy hand with marks of the most reverential respect.
Mary understood the look that Buckingham fixed upon her.
"If it were a wedding-ring, I would not accept it," she said.
"And yet you were willing to ask him to return to you." "Oh! duke," cried the young girl in heart-broken accents, "a woman such as I am is never accepted as a consolation by a man like him." "You do not think he will return, then ?" "Never," said Miss Grafton, in a choking voice.
"And I grieve to tell you, Mary, that he will find yonder his happiness destroyed, his mistress lost to him.

His honor even has not escaped.
What will be left him, then, Mary, equal to your affection?
Answer, Mary, you who know yourself so well." Miss Grafton placed her white hand on Buckingham's arm, and, while Raoul was hurrying away with headlong speed, she repeated in dying accents the line from Romeo and Juliet: "_I must be gone and live, or stay and die_." As she finished the last word, Raoul disappeared.

Miss Grafton returned to her own apartments, paler than death.