"Thank you! thank you! Then tell me what pains you! Darling, darling, you cannot know how I suffer to see you in this state. I must have an explanation. Lina, you have no right to refuse it."
"I can give none! Ralph, leave me, I must be alone. Another time I may be able to converse, but now"—she broke off abruptly, wringing her hands in impotent despair, while the great tears fell over them, like the last heavy drops of a spent shower. "Leave me, Ralph, leave me!" she exclaimed, with a gesture of insane agony.
"I cannot understand this! Can this be Lina—my own dear little Lina, always so confiding and truthful? Since my earliest recollection have you not known my every thought and wish—been as familiar with my heart as you were with your own? This is the first time that the slightest shadow has fallen upon your mind against me, yet there you stand, separated from me by some fearful sorrow, to which I can obtain no clue."
"Do not speak so, Ralph! I repeat that nothing troubles me much! Will you not believe me?"
"I never doubted your word before, Lina; but now—forgive me—I feel that you are concealing something terrible from me. When I left you, this morning, you promised to walk with me, and I hurried here the moment I was free, longing to take a ramble over the hills—will you not go?"
"Not to-day. I cannot—I am ill."
"Do not seek to excuse yourself! Say at once that you do not choose to go."
"You misunderstand me, Ralph, indeed you do."
"Forgive me, Lina; I am so maddened by the sight of your tears, that I scarcely know what I am saying. Only confide in me—can you not trust me, your lover, your betrothed?"
"God help me!" broke from Lina's white lips, but the exclamation was unheeded by the young man in his agitation.