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THE STEADFAST HEART

of the matter was laid aside. All that was apparent to her was the dreadful possibility of a Canfield being hurried by mysterious forces into marriage with a Burke; the scandalous thought of a girl in her position smirching herself and her family by mating with a man of Angus Burke's antecedents, his degraded parentage.

“I sha’n’t…. I sha’n’t…. I sha’n’t…” she muttered fiercely, repeating it again and again. “I sha’n’t marry him. I’ll never see him again…. Never…. Never…. Never….”