"An hour later, I met him on the doorstep. 'I am glad to have seen you,' he said slowly, 'and to thank you for your kindness; for I am going away. You will be good to her, Anne, for my sake,—will you not?'
"He turned from me, and passed down the walk. I watched him until a sharp turn hid him from my sight. I never saw him afterwards alive.
"The next day it rained, and the next; and it was not until the third day that Eleanor and I took our usual walk. As we left the house, she suggested that we shape our way towards the lake. Agreeing, we walked on slowly, and I tried to make James Alexander the subject of our talk. At first she evaded me; and, when at last she found my persistence was not in any other way to be turned aside, said,—
"'It is an unpleasant subject to me, dear Anne. I fear I have much to blame myself for. I suffer enough; for, in rejecting his love, I shut my eyes on a life that would have been a continual delight, to open them on one from which my very soul shrinks abhorrently, and yet to which I am solemnly pledged.'
"'But it may not yet be too late,' I said, eagerly; for God knows I loved James Alexander with no selfish love.
"'Yes, it is too late,' she replied mournfully. 'I shall never allude to it again, Anne; but I tell you now, that I do not and can never love Mr. Radnor; but there are family reasons that make the sacrifice of my hand a necessity. I never realized, until within the last few weeks, that it was such a sacrifice. I have been so happy, that I dared not break the spell by telling him the truth. And somehow the future seemed very far; and I did not dream that this summer would ever end.'
"Then there was silence between us for a space. At last she spoke again,—
"'I hope he will not suffer long. Tell him some time, Anne, what I have told you. He will not quite hate me, perhaps, then, if he knows that I was not drawing him on to gratify a foolish coquetry, but loved and suffered like himself.'
"I was about to reply, but she laid her hand on my mouth.
"'No,' she said. 'Let the subject go now forever. And no one will dream by-and-by how fair a love lies buried beneath my laces and jewels; or that, in the life of the noted man that he will one day surely become, is a romance that belongs to a dead past. It will all be the same a century hence. What does it matter after all?'