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When Basil joined his friends in the passage, Old Corrie touched Emily's arm, and slight as was the action, she understood it, and following him into the room in which Mr. Philpott and the two men they had surprised were conferring, left Basil and Annette together. Old Corrie had placed the lamp on a bracket, and by its dim light our hero and heroine were enabled to see each other. Basil's eyes were fixed earnestly upon Annette, but her agitation was too profound to meet his loving gaze. His heart was filled with pity for the faithful girl who had been for years the victim of Newman Chaytor's foul plot; her drooping head, her modest attitude, her hands clasped supplicatingly before her, made his pity and his love for her almost too painful to bear.
"Annette," he said softly, "will you not look at me?"
She raised her eyes to his face, and he saw that they were filled with tears.
"Can you forgive me, Basil?" she whispered.
"Forgive you, dear Annette!" he exclaimed, taking her hands in his, "it is I who ought to ask forgiveness for believing that you could forget me."
"Never for a single day," she murmured, "have I forgotten you. Through all these years you have been to me the star of hope which made life bright for me. Oh, Basil, Basil! it seems as if you have lifted me from death to life. The world was so dark, so dark-----"
"It shall be dark no more dear," he said, his voice trembling with excess of tenderness. "Until you bid me leave you I will be ever by your side. I consecrate my life to you. What man can do to compensate for the suffering you have endured, that will I do in truth, and honour, and love."
He placed his arms about her, and she laid her head upon his breast. There are joys too sacred for utterance, and such joy did Basil and Annette feel as they stood clasped in each other's arms on that dark and solemn night.
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