'If Mr Harleigh will take a ramble to the church-yard upon the Hill, at Brighthelmstone, next Thursday morning, at five o'clock, he will there meet a female fellow-traveller, now in the greatest distress, who solicits his advice and assistance, to extricate her from her present intolerable abode.'
Deeply colouring, 'And could Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'even for a moment believe,—suppose,—'
He interrupted her, with an air of tender respect. 'No; I did not, indeed, dare believe, dare suppose that an honour, a trust such as might be implied by an appeal like this, came from you! Yet for you I was sure it was meant to pass; and to discover by whom it was devised, and for what purpose, irresistibly drew me hither, though with full conviction of imposition. I came, however, pre-determined to watch around your dwelling, at the appointed hour, ere I repaired to the bidden place. But what was my agitation when I thought I saw you! I doubted my senses. I retreated; I hung back; your face was shaded by your head-dress;—yet your air,—your walk,—was it possible I could be deceived? Nevertheless, I resolved not to speak, nor to approach you, till I saw whether you proceeded to the church-yard. I was by no means free from suspicion of some new stratagem of Elinor; for, fatigued with concealment, I was then publicly at my house upon Bagshot Heath, where the note had reached me. Yet her distance from Brighthelmstone for so early an hour, joined to intelligence which I had received some time ago,—for you will not imagine that the period which I spend without seeing, I spend also without hearing of you?—that you had been observed,—and more than once,—at that early hour, in the church-yard—'
'True!' cried Juliet, eagerly, 'at that hour I have frequently met, or accompanied, a friend, a beloved friend! thither; and, in her name, I had even then, when I saw you, been deluded: not for a walk; a ramble; not upon any party of pleasure; but to visit a little tomb, which holds the regretted remains of the darling and only child of that dear, unhappy friend!'
She wept. Harleigh, extremely touched, said, 'You have, then, a friend here?—Is it,—may I ask?—is it the person you so earnestly sought upon your arrival?—Is your anxiety relieved?—your embarrassment?—your suspence?—your cruel distress?—Will you not give me, at length, some little satisfaction? Can you wonder that my forbearance is worn out?—Can my impatience offend you?—If I press to know your situation, it is but with the desire to partake it!—If I solicit to hear your name—it is but with the hope ... that you will suffer me to change it!'
He would have taken her hand, but, drawing back, and wiping her eyes, though irresistibly touched, 'Offend?' she repeated; 'Oh far,—far!... but why will you recur to a subject that ought so long since to have been exploded?—while another,—an essential one, calls for all my attention?—The last packet which you left with me, you must suffer me instantly to return; the first,—the first—' She stammered, coloured, and then added, 'The first,—I am shocked to own,—I must defer returning yet a little longer!'
'Defer?' ardently repeated Harleigh. 'Ah! why not condescend to think, at least, another language, if not to speak it? Why not anticipate, in kind idea, at least, the happy period,—for me! when I may be permitted to consider as included, and mutual in our destinies, whatever hitherto—'
'Oh hold!—Oh Mr Harleigh!' interrupted Juliet, in a voice of anguish. 'Let no errour, no misconstruction, of this terrible sort,—no inference, no expectation, thus wide from all possible reality, add to my various misfortunes the misery of remorse!'
'Remorse?—Gracious powers! What can you mean?'
'That I have committed the most dreadful of mistakes,—a mistake that I ought never to forgive myself, if, in the relief from immediate perplexity, which I ventured to owe to a momentary, and, I own, an intentionally unacknowledged, usage of some of the notes which you forced into my possession, I have given rise to a belief,—to an idea,—to—'