One day I called, and was shown into an anteroom, until some friend had departed. I heard words in an adjoining closet, and knew the voice of Louisa—for such was the name of the fair creature who had claimed so much interest from me.
"Why will not you, my dearest Louisa?" said the soft voice of a young man. "This is terrible! Think, love, meditate, what will be the dreadful issue! Oh, sweet, angelic being! why were you fated to make me adore you for acting against those wishes I now breathe in your ear? Ask the doctor; tell him the awful secret, that our happiness depends on ten written letters of a name; and he has only to say write, and it is written."
"I have already tried to speak to him, but I cannot. Alfred, I see our danger. My aunt, I fear, is dying. The £20,000 left her by her husband goes to a sordid wretch, his brother, if she dies without a will. There is none on earth she loves but me and Alfred. O beloved Alfred! you alone divide, with that angelic woman, the affection of your Louisa. You are poor; I know it; I have wept for it. I have nothing on this earth. If she die without a will, we are beggars, and her last breath will wail our destiny, and her last tear tell her too late her unavailing sympathy. I know all this. It is my night thought, my day dream, my love's whisper, my Alfred's theme; but, God help me, I cannot break this subject to the doctor; my very heart bounds within my bosom at the thought of raising one slight fear in the breast of that woman to whom I owe all the happiness I have ever experienced upon earth. What, oh, what shall be done, Alfred?"
I heard her sobs burst from her, as she sought for sympathy in the bosom of her lover.
"Louisa, love, lift up your head," he answered. "You are sacrificing both of us to a feeling which that excellent woman herself would pronounce a weakness and a cruelty to both you and her. Think, love, what shall be the thoughts, the agonies, of your aunt, if she finds herself firmly locked in the arms of death, and her hands bound up, by his rigid grasp, from obeying the dictates of a bursting, breaking heart. The thought that Augustus Germain, the man she hates, inherits all her fortune, and that her dear Louisa is left by her a beggar, will drag her parting spirit to the confines of the flesh, and torture it in the body's expiring struggle. You tremble at rousing in her a fear of death, by the mention of the will; and you inflict a thousand agonies, by leaving her unprepared for that death when it comes. Louisa, Louisa, lift up your head, and say if these are not the words of truth."
A silence succeeded these words. The girl was in tears, and her feelings choked her reply.
"I feel that you have spoken truth, Alfred," said she; "yet I cannot do it, I cannot—I will rather be a beggar."
"And you will be a beggar, sweet but deluded girl," rejoined the lover; "and Alfred, who would have died for his Louisa, will be also a beggar, through her weakness. Love is hated by the Fates."
Another pause intervened, of some moments.
"But, Alfred," resumed the sobbing girl, "if—if—oh, I tremble at the word—if my aunt should die without a will, and your Louisa, in place of having twenty thousand pounds, is, as she will be, a beggar—will your love for me, Alfred—ah, I choke—the thought swells my heart——"