"Emily!"
The young lady started up with a cry, and stared with wide-open eyes at the young man who stood before her, as if she had been suddenly roused from a deep sleep and did not know whether she were still in a dream or saw what was real before her.
"Emily!" the young man said once more, and opened his arms.
"Adolphus!" she cried, and threw herself on his breast.
The two held each other embraced as they had done in the days of their childhood when the brother came home during vacations, and the sister had gone to meet him at the park gate.
But the days of childhood's innocence were long past. Emily tore herself from her brother's arms, and cried, stretching out her hands as if to keep him away from her,
"Where do you come from? What do you want here?"
"Can you ask that, Emily?" he replied, sadly; "What I want here? You! Where I come from? From Paris; where I have searched for you months and months; where I found a trace of you at last, just as you were leaving town, and from whence I have followed you from town to town, from hotel to hotel, without ever succeeding in finding you alone. Not that I am afraid of him!" said the young man, unconsciously drawing himself up proudly to his full height, "but I wanted to speak to you kindly and gently, and I knew I should not be able to do that in his presence."
Adolphus approached his sister to seize her hand. She stepped back.
"What do you want of me?" she murmured.