"You have received this warning, and though it is not likely to have been given with any very friendly design, still you may take advantage of it, and avoid by flight the danger to which you are exposed." "Impossible," she answered.

"I could not reconcile such a course to my conscience, or to my reverence for my father's memory." "There is still another course open to you," he pursued, "if you choose to adopt it; and that is, to take a stop which shall make the fulfilment of this promise impossible." "I understand you," she replied; "but that is equally out of the question.

Often and often have I thought over this matter, and with much uneasiness; but I cannot relieve myself of the obligation imposed upon me." "O Aveline!" cried Sir Jocelyn.

"If you allow yourself, by any fancied scruples, to be forced into a marriage repugnant to your feelings, you will condemn both yourself and me to misery." "I know it--I feel it; and yet there is no escape," she cried, "Were I to act on your suggestions, and fly from this threatened danger, or remove it altogether by a marriage with you--were I to disobey my father, I should never know a moment's peace." There was a brief pause, interrupted only by her sobs.

At length Sir Jocelyn exclaimed quickly, "Perhaps, we may be unnecessarily alarming ourselves, and this may only be a trick of Sir Giles Mompesson.