"Ah, I love you, I adore you," returned Eva; "I could endure anything on your account—even the pangs of my own conscience; but my parents, my brother and sisters! ah, you know not what it costs me to deceive them! they are so good, so excellent; and I! Yet sometimes the love which I have for them contends with the love which I have for you. Do not string the bow too tightly, Victor! And now—farewell, beloved, farewell! In a month's time you will see me, your Eva, again, in M——s."
"Stop!" said he, "do you think you are to leave me in that way? Where is my ring?"
"On my heart," returned she, "day and night it rests there—farewell! ah, let me go!"
"Say once more that you love me above every thing in this world!" said he, "that you belong only to me!"
"Only to you! farewell!" and with these words Eva tore herself away from him, and hastened with flying feet, like one terrified, across the churchyard. The Major followed her slowly. A dark form stepped at that moment hastily forward, as if it had arisen from one of the graves, and met the Major face to face. It seemed to him as if a cold wind passed through his heart, for the form tall and silent, and at that dark hour, and in the churchyard, had something in it ominous and spectre-like, and as it had evidently advanced to him with design, he paused suddenly, and asked, sharply, "Who are you?"
"Eva's father!" replied a suppressed but powerful voice, and by the up-flaring light of a lamp which the wind drove towards them, the Major saw the eyes of the Judge riveted upon him with a wrathful and threatening expression. His heart sank for a moment; but in the next he said, with all his accustomed haughty levity:
"Now there is no necessity for me to watch longer after her;" and so saying he turned hastily aside, and vanished in the darkness.
The Judge followed his daughter without nearing her. When he came home, such a deep and painful grief lay on his brow as had never been observed there before.
For the first time in his life the powerful head of the Judge seemed actually bowed.