"I cannot tell. I cannot," he added, more passionately, "believe in any affection strong and deep enough to last; but I can forgive, and consider natural, any love that turns to pity at the truth. Do you comprehend me?"
"Scarcely."
"Well then—I am going blind!"
An awful and unexpected revelation, which took her breath away, and seemed for an instant to stop her heart beating.
"Oh! Sidney—my poor Sidney—it cannot be!"
"Sooner or later, Harriet, it must be; mine is a hopeless case," he answered; "with care, and less night work, and quiet—that last means absence from all mental excitement—I may go on for a few years more; the last physician whom I have consulted even thinks he can give me ten years' grace. Now in ten years, ten of the best years of a young man's life, I ought to save, and I hope to save, sufficient to live upon. I may be over-sanguine, but if I get a good foothold I will try. And now where lives the girl who will accept a ten years' engagement, with the chance of a beggar or a blind man at the end of it?"
Harriet pressed his arm.
"Here," she answered.
"You will! There is the faith to wait, the courage to endure, and the love to sustain me. You are not afraid?"
"No—I have no fear," replied Harriet, warmly; "God knows that I have changed very much, and only lately learned to understand myself. I do not fear, Sidney, for I—I have learned to love you, and, by comparison, to see how noble and high-principled you are. But oh! if I were but more worthy of you, and your deep love for me!"