Valancourt again sat down, but was still silent, and trembled.

At length he said, with a hesitating voice, 'This lovely scene!--I am going to leave--to leave you--perhaps for ever! These moments may never return; I cannot resolve to neglect, though I scarcely dare to avail myself of them.

Let me, however, without offending the delicacy of your sorrow, venture to declare the admiration I must always feel of your goodness--O! that at some future period I might be permitted to call it love!' Emily's emotion would not suffer her to reply; and Valancourt, who now ventured to look up, observing her countenance change, expected to see her faint, and made an involuntary effort to support her, which recalled Emily to a sense of her situation, and to an exertion of her spirits.
Valancourt did not appear to notice her indisposition, but, when he spoke again, his voice told the tenderest love.

'I will not presume,' he added, 'to intrude this subject longer upon your attention at this time, but I may, perhaps, be permitted to mention, that these parting moments would lose much of their bitterness if I might be allowed to hope the declaration I have made would not exclude me from your presence in future.' Emily made another effort to overcome the confusion of her thoughts, and to speak.

She feared to trust the preference her heart acknowledged towards Valancourt, and to give him any encouragement for hope, on so short an acquaintance.