Go (and here her voice faltered for a moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at least implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather than cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the bitterness of which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason tears herself away from you forever." "Stay, Isabel, stay!" cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe, "give me but one word more, and you shall leave me.

Say that if I can create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified, as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us to form,--say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,--say, that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!" Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own.

Her lips moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt read well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into smiles.

He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared; the gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already he had earned and won his reward.
He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and trembling form,--and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone..