"Possibly!" replied Henry. "But on the strength of this faith I would not dispense with the fire."
"How wonderfully various," said Clara, "are these ice-flowers! Is it not strange, one seems to have seen them all in reality, yet cannot give a name to a single one of them? And look how one grows over the other, and how the noble leaves seem to expand, even as we speak of them."
"It is your sweet breath, my dear, that is calling up these ghosts and spirits of departed flowers," said Henry. "I imagine that some invisible genius is reading all thy gentle and loving fancies, and pictures them forth, as they arise, in these flower-phantoms; so that, by looking at this glass, I know, even while you are silent, that your thoughts are full of love—that they are dwelling upon me."
A fond kiss was the answer and the reward of this pretty speech.
Henry took up his journal, and beginning at the ante-penultimate page, read aloud:—"To-day—Sold to that old miser of a bookseller, my rare copy of Chaucer, the costly edition of Caxton. My friend, the dear, noble Andreas Vandelmeer, made me a present of it on my birthday, when we were at the university together. He had written to London for it himself: paid an enormous price for it; and then had it bound, after his own taste, in rich Gothic style. The old hunks of a bookseller will, no doubt, send it back to London, and will get for it tenfold what he has given me. I ought, at least, to have cut out the leaf where the circumstance of this gift is recorded; and here I have written some lamentable lines, signed with my present name and address. This is vexatious. Parting with this book almost persuades me that something like want is pressing on us; for, without doubt, it was the most precious thing I possessed, and the memorial of my dearest and my only friend. Oh, Andreas Vandelmeer! art thou still living? Where art thou? And dost thou still think of me?"
"I saw your pain," said Clara, as he concluded, "when you sold that book; but this friend of your youth—you have never described him to me."
"He was in person," replied Henry, "somewhat resembling myself—rather older and more staid. We knew each other as boys at school. I might say he almost persecuted me with his love, so passionately did he press it on me. He was ever complaining that my friendship was too cold. Rich as he was, and tenderly as he had been brought up, no indulgence had made him selfish. On leaving the university, he determined on going to India, that distant land of wonder having fascinated his ardent imagination. There was then quite a storm of entreaties and supplications that I should accompany him. He assured me that I should make my fortune there, as his own forefathers had in fact done. But my mother died about this time, and my friends, moreover, procured for me a position in the diplomatic body. He persuaded me, at least, to entrust to him the small fortune I had inherited from my mother, that he might employ it advantageously for me; a request which I have always suspected was made in order that he might have, some future time, a pretext and disguise for his generosity. We took leave of each other, and I repaired, in the suite of my ambassador, to the town where your father resided—and where"——
"The history becomes tolerably well known to us both. But this noble Andreas—did you never hear of him again?"
"I received two letters," answered Henry, "from that remote quarter of the world. After which I heard, but through no authentic source, that he died of the cholera. So far as fortune was concerned, I was left as you see, entirely dependent on myself. Still, I enjoyed the favour of my ambassador—was not unpopular at my court—could reckon on some powerful friends;—but all this has disappeared."
"All this, alas!" said Clara, "you have sacrificed for me. And I also am a fugitive from home."