Never, Algernon, never!--I love you too--too well!" But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the tone in which these words were uttered was too violent to endure; and, as the full desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan's mind, she sank back upon her chair in very sickness of soul, nor heeded, in her unconscious misery, that her hand was yet clasped by her lover and that her head drooped upon his bosom.
"Isabel," he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear seemed the concentration of all earthly music,--"Isabel, look up,--my own, my beloved,--look up and hear me.

Perhaps you say truly when you tell me that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty which, even if he did offer, I would reject; but, dearest, are there not a thousand paths open to me,--the law, the state, the army ?--you are silent, Isabel,--speak!" Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his told, in their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied by the arguments he urged.
"Besides," he continued, "we know not yet whether the law may not decide in my favour: at all events years may pass before the judgment is given; those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us not waste them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let us snatch what happiness is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while the heavens are still bright above us, the burden of the thunder or the cloud." Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings, yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon her mind.

It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the strength of her resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted her eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but firm voice,-- "It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain.

I can be to you nothing but a blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish.

Think you that I will be this ?--no, I will not darken your fair hopes and impede your reasonable ambition.