"Robert of Lester!" she cried, starting back as if memory had vividly returned at the sound of his voice.
"I am he," was the reply of the stranger, bending his head lowly, as if deprecating her displeasure.
"Leave me, sir," she said, haughtily, though returning love was evidently struggling for the mastery over her sense of right. As she spoke she drew herself up commandingly, though her bosom heaved with emotion, and her averted eyes contradicted her words.
"Dearest Kate!"
"Robert of Lester, I bid you leave me. Your presence is an intrusion, sir."
"Lady," he said, with tenderness, "do you not remember when, five years since, you placed, with your own fair hands, the arrow you now hold in them, in my bonnet."
"Nay, bring not up the past; 'tis buried—long forgotten," she cried, nervously, and in a voice tremulous with feeling. "Would to God you had not appeared to revive it."
"Lady," he continued, in a soft, subdued tone, that touched her heart, "does not love's early dream—"
"That dream is o'er. Oh, that you would cease to recall what will only render me miserable!" she added, with feeling, burying her face in her hands.
"Is there no room for pardon—none for forgiveness? Hear me, Kate! dearest Kate! You who were my playmate in childhood—who in youth first awakened love in this bosom. Dash not the cup of hope for ever to the ground! I have sought thee, and now kneel to thee, to tell thee how fondly, how madly I love—"