If you have not sufficient confidence in my affection to believe this, let me alone.' 'My darling angel--my own Helen,' cried I, now passionately kissing the hand I still retained, and throwing my left arm around her, 'you never shall repent, if it depend on me alone.

But have you thought of your aunt ?' I trembled for the answer, and clasped her closer to my heart in the instinctive dread of losing my new-found treasure.
'My aunt must not know of it yet,' said she.

'She would think it a rash, wild step, because she could not imagine how well I know you; but she must know you herself, and learn to like you.

You must leave us now, after lunch, and come again in spring, and make a longer stay, and cultivate her acquaintance, and I know you will like each other.' 'And then you will be mine,' said I, printing a kiss upon her lips, and another, and another; for I was as daring and impetuous now as I had been backward and constrained before.
'No--in another year,' replied she, gently disengaging herself from my embrace, but still fondly clasping my hand.
'Another year! Oh, Helen, I could not wait so long!' 'Where is your fidelity ?' 'I mean I could not endure the misery of so long a separation.' 'It would not be a separation: we will write every day: my spirit shall be always with you, and sometimes you shall see me with your bodily eye.
I will not be such a hypocrite as to pretend that I desire to wait so long myself, but as my marriage is to please myself, alone, I ought to consult my friends about the time of it.' 'Your friends will disapprove.' 'They will not greatly disapprove, dear Gilbert,' said she, earnestly kissing my hand; 'they cannot, when they know you, or, if they could, they would not be true friends--I should not care for their estrangement.
Now are you satisfied ?' She looked up in my face with a smile of ineffable tenderness.
'Can I be otherwise, with your love?
And you do love me, Helen ?' said I, not doubting the fact, but wishing to hear it confirmed by her own acknowledgment.

'If you loved as I do,' she earnestly replied, 'you would not have so nearly lost me--these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you--you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.' 'But this is too much happiness,' said I, embracing her again; 'I have not deserved it, Helen--I dare not believe in such felicity: and the longer I have to wait, the greater will be my dread that something will intervene to snatch you from me--and think, a thousand things may happen in a year!--I shall be in one long fever of restless terror and impatience all the time.