'You will oblige me, Sir,' said Emmeline, feeling that notwithstanding all her attempts to conceal it the truth trembled in her eyes and faultered in her accents—'you will oblige me if you say no more of this.'
'I will obey you, if you will only tell me I may hope.'
'How can I say so, Sir, when so long a time must intervene before I shall think of fixing myself for life.'
'Yet surely you know, the generous, the candid Miss Mowbray knows, whether her devoted Godolphin is agreeable to her, or whether, if every obstacle which exists in her timid imagination were removed, he would be judged wholly unworthy of pretending to the honour of her hand?'
'Certainly not unworthy,' tremblingly said Emmeline.
'Let me then, thus encouraged, go farther—and ask if I have a place in your esteem?'
'Do not ask me—indeed I cannot tell—Nay I beg, I entreat,' added she, trying to disengage her hands from him, 'that you will desist—do not force me to leave you.'
'Ah! talk not, think not of leaving me; think rather of confirming those fortunate presages I draw from this lovely timidity. I cannot go till I know your thoughts of me—till I know what place I hold in that soft bosom.'
'I think of you as an excellent brother; as a generous and disinterested friend; for such I have found you; as a man of great good sense, of noble principles, of exalted honour!'
'As one then,' said Godolphin, vehemently interrupting her, 'not unworthy of being entrusted with your happiness; who may hope to be honoured with a deposit so inestimable, as the confidence and tenderness of that gentle and generous heart?'