It was scarcely prudent to make such an admission, or to add--as she presently did--'I have power to bid you go, now: another time it might be different,'-- but I was not base enough to attempt to take advantage of her candour.
'But we may write,' I timidly suggested.

'You will not deny me that consolation ?' 'We can hear of each other through my brother.' 'Your brother!' A pang of remorse and shame shot through me.

She had not heard of the injury he had sustained at my hands; and I had not the courage to tell her.

'Your brother will not help us,' I said: 'he would have all communion between us to be entirely at an end.' 'And he would be right, I suppose.

As a friend of both, he would wish us both well; and every friend would tell us it was our interest, as well as our duty, to forget each other, though we might not see it ourselves.
But don't be afraid, Gilbert,' she added, smiling sadly at my manifest discomposure; 'there is little chance of my forgetting you.