"Is it the affairs of the nation you are so deeply meditating on, Mr. De Lancey, or your own affairs?"
"My affairs!" exclaimed Henry, in a tone of deep depression, while his dark lustrous eyes became dim and glassy with emotion. "I have no affairs! a creature of charity,—of the most generous and noble-minded benevolence,—but still a dependent on the bounty of others! In your presence I could forget the mystery and bitterness of my lot,—but I forget it too much! I am not answerable for my feelings, but I am for my actions; and I must leave you for ever! I can never know the rapture of a requited attachment; but why should I not acknowledge the feelings of admiration that must be common to all in your presence. I am a nameless outcast; but pardon my folly and infatuation in having loved you, without a hope of return. My mother perished, as you know, under fearful circumstances; and who can tell whether my father may not have died like a felon! My worst enemy can say, or suspect nothing worse than I sometimes fear; and I deserve all I suffer for having one moment forgotten the dark mystery of my lot."
"You were here, then, Mr. De Lancey, some moments ago," said Caroline, in hurried accents! "You overheard all that my aunt so imprudently said! you! you!—you—what must you think!"
"I dare not trust my lips with the expression of half what I think and feel," replied Henry, in a low, deep, broken voice, and fixing his troubled eye on Caroline. "Let me speak for once to you on that subject which another began! Let me for once relieve my heart, by saying how entirely,—how unchangeably I love you. What bright visions of hope have flitted before my fancy, all blighted now for ever! I know the utter despair that ought to attend my attachment. Love, to others a blessing, must ever be to me a curse; yet I would rather love you without a hope of return, than gain the hearts of a thousand others. I neither ask nor expect encouragement; only believe and pity me! In the long absence which awaits me from home, let me be consoled by thinking, that I am not utterly despised and forgotten,—that when time and distance have separated us, I may still preserve a place in your memory, though not perhaps remembered, as I shall remember you."
Caroline listened with deep delight to this renewed confession of Henry's long-cherished attachment. It seemed as if she could have listened for ever, but was unable to reply during several minutes of agitated silence, till at length, with a strong effort, she said in faltering accents, yet with some of her usual vivacity—
"You said this once before, and I never forgot it. You were very dull not to read my heart long ago. If I felt less I could say more. Be constant for two long years, and we may be happy! I need then consult no one's wishes but my own. Sir Arthur knows all. He has been entrusted with my thoughts from the first moment, when you told me that—that our attachment was reciprocal!"
"Can it be!" exclaimed young De Lancey, in accents of the wildest joy, while, in a transport of emotion, he clasped her hand in his own, and those words were at last spoken between them, which pledged Henry and Caroline to each other for ever. "I am not then doomed to pass through life alone and uncared for. You will accept a heart that never has loved, and never can love another! I am now afraid only of being too happy! The tide of my whole existence is changed! The two years you bid me wait shall not be wasted. For your sake I shall strenuously seek to become the architect of my own fortunes, to throw off the trammels of obscurity, to carve out for myself a name which you shall not be ashamed to hear. The world is before me, where, with buoyant hopes and resolute will, surely I may achieve something, when my ardent aim and eager hope shall be to enjoy honor first, and love hereafter. For years I have not known a moment of solitude, as your image has been my perpetual companion, and now there is no futurity of life to either of us, in which we shall not both be interested, for, believe me, no one on earth was ever loved with greater depth and constancy of attachment than yourself."
The feelings of a lifetime are sometimes concentrated in a single hour, and so it was with Henry and Caroline, who talked of the past and of the future with buoyant hopes and entire affection, but not yet with an entire confidence; for it was evident that Miss Smythe, in speaking of her own connexions and prospects, became agitated and reserved, while she concluded the conversation abruptly, by saying,
"I shall feel proud and happy to think that the motive for all your exertions is derived from a generous and disinterested attachment to myself; and whether success or failure be the consequence, we shall at last share it together, for better or for worse. All real happiness must spring from the heart. I care neither for splendor nor amusement—they are the mere outside crust visible to the vulgar eye; but friendship and—and attachment, founded on religion, these are the jewel in the casket, outweighing all else."
"Without them, none can know the greatest joys or the greatest sorrows of this world," said Henry, with emotion. "For your sake I have now a thousand ambitious desires that never would have occurred to me for myself alone. If there be anything in me deserving your regard, I wish it were ten times redoubled, and that, besides, I had fortune, talents, estates, and friends, beyond the utmost desires of all your connexions."