“Hugh, I do not comprehend what of late has possessed you,” she retorted in the same fretful voice. “You have suffered the most ridiculous fancies and chimeras to seize upon your brain, and you not only make yourself miserable, but you seem to wish to compel everybody else to become so.”
“Helen, you wrong me.”
“Indeed, I fear I do not. Even to-night, when you must have been conscious that to accomplish a meeting with you was to me next to an impossibility, you insisted upon my complying with your request, and you bring me here only to entertain me with a string of doubts and fears, which are not worthy of you.”
He started, and released her hand, of which, until now, he had retained possession.
“You do not love me, Helen!” he exclaimed, passionately, as he recoiled from her.
“Not love you, Hugh,” she replied, throwing up her head angrily; “you are ungrateful, sir. Ask your reason. At what sacrifice have I paused for you? You, at least, have had proof that my love for you was of no ordinary character; you——”
“Oh, Helen!” he cried falling upon his knees before her, “pardon me, forgive me! I am frenzied at the prospect of losing you. I do love you so fondly, so dearly, so madly, that death in any shape seems to me preferable to being torn from you for years. You are my heart’s idol, its worship—my adoration; and if I am captious, full of strange conceptions and dread misgivings, attribute it alone to my passion for you, my Helen, my beloved!”
It is rarely that a young girl who is possessed of genuine tenderness of feeling for a young and handsome man, remains an indifferent listener to his ardent expressions of passionate devotion. Helen Grahame was not less susceptible in this particular than the weakest of her sex. She bent over Hugh, parted with her soft white hand his rich glossy hair from his forehead, and pressed it with her ruby lips.
“Rise, Hugh, rise,” she said, fondly and earnestly, “I entreat you. Pray, be more calm. Elevate yourself above this morbid feeling of unhappiness, and let me hear what you have to communicate to me, for indeed I must almost instantly return to the house. I am expected in the drawing-room, and, if missed, a messenger will be sent in search of me. I would not for worlds be discovered here.”
“Helen dearest.” he exclaimed with a quivering lip as he rose to his feet and once more twined his arms about her graceful form, “I leave London to-morrow—I know not yet at what hour—for Southampton; if that were to be the limit of my journey I should not be thus depressed, but from a confidential source I have received the hint that I shall be called upon to proceed by the overland route, to India—to the city of Agra. I believe this is decided; our separation cannot, therefore, be less than for six months; it may be for years—it is this thought which wounds me so deeply, for what may not happen in my absence? What indeed!”