"Did—did Governor Phipps speak of me in this connection?"
"No, but when I had been speaking of you, he said it, as if the idea came with your name."
Barbara shook her head, slowly and mournfully.
"It can never happen. This land holds no corner of rest for me now. Here is struggle, temptation, bitter soul-strife; there, is rest, that leaden rest, which comes when there is nothing to hope or fear. Oh, my young friend, it is a terrible thing, when one reaches the hill-tops of life, and finds a broad, ashen desert beyond, with a grave on the other side, which you long to reach, but must not."
"But surely this is not your case, lady?"
"Alas! what else?" she whispered, casting that wistful look seaward again. "What of joy, or hope, can ever come to me again?"
"And are you so unhappy?" questioned the youth, almost with tears in his eyes.
"Unhappy! I do not know—but let us talk of other things: this fair girl Elizabeth."
"Do not speak of her—she wounds me with her coldness, she insults me with suspicions—let us talk of any thing rather than her."
"But she loves you, for all that."