He took her little trembling hand in his and looked searchingly into her face.
"Leslie," she said, "I have such a strange feeling. Perhaps you will laugh at it. I should have laughed at it myself two hours ago."
"Tell me, dear," he pleaded; "I will not even smile."
She looked up with something like awe shining in her large eyes.
"Leslie, I can hardly find words to put this strong presentiment in; but I feel that if we part now—like this—that before you win the honors you covet, some terrible bar of fate will come between us and sunder us so widely that we shall never meet again."
The low, impressive words fell heavily on his heart, chilling it like ice. How strangely they sounded from his little Bonnibel, who but an hour ago was as gay as a butterfly in the sunshine. Now the very elements of tragedy were in her voice and face. A jealous pang struck him to the heart.
"Bonnibel," he said, quietly, "do you mean that your uncle would marry you to someone else before I came back to claim you?"
"I do not know," she said; "I hardly think my feeling was as clearly defined as that. It was a dim, intangible something I could not fathom, and took no peculiar shape. But he might try to do that, for, oh, Leslie! Uncle Francis is terribly angry with us both."
"I am quite aware of that, my dearest," he answered, bitterly. "But, Bonnibel, this presentiment of yours troubles me. Perhaps I am foolish, but I have always been a half-way believer in these things."
"Leslie, I believe it firmly," she said, choking back a sob that rose in her throat; "Uncle Francis will dig some impassable gulf between us. When we part to-night, it will be forever."