"Be all to her, Louis,
that I have been," he murmured to himself, repeating his mother's
last words, and beginning the letter while he uttered them. It
was soon completed. It expressed in the most respectful terms his
gratitude for the offer made to him, and his inability to accept
it, in consequence of domestic circumstances which it was
needless to explain. The letter was directed, sealed; it only
remained for him to place it in the post-bag, lying near at hand.
At this last decisive act he hesitated. He had told Lomaque, and
he had firmly believed himself, that he had conquered all
ambitions for his sister's sake. He knew now, for the first time,
that he had only lulled them to rest--he knew that the letter
from Paris had aroused them. His answer was written, his hand was
on the post-bag, and at that moment the whole struggle had to be
risked over again--risked when he was most unfit for it! He was
not a man under any ordinary circumstances to procrastinate, but
he procrastinated now.
"Night brings counsel; I will wait till to-morrow," he said to
himself, and put the letter of refusal in his pocket, and hastily
quitted the laboratory.
CHAPTER II.
Inexorably the important morrow came: irretrievably, for good or
for evil, the momentous marriage-vow was pronounced. Charles
Danville and Rose Trudaine were now man and wife. The prophecy of
the magnificent sunset overnight had not proved false.
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