"You do not give me credit for the change which has come over me--if you did, you could not leave me so coolly. I'm not so bound up in appearances as I was once. Ah, Philip! this old country-house will be intolerably lonely when you are gone." He looked down into the beautiful face trembling with emotion; he had never seen her when she looked so fair as then, because he had never seen her when her feelings were really so deeply touched. The memory of the deep passion he had once felt for her swept back over him, tumultuous as the waves of a sea. Her cheek, wet with tears, and flushed with feeling, pressed against his arm. It was a dangerous hour for the peace of that other young maiden in the far West. Old dreams, old habits, old hopes, old associates, the glittering of the waves of the Hudson, familiar to him from infancy, the scent of the sea-breeze, and the odors of the lilies in the homestead garden, the beautiful face upon his arm which he had watched since it was a babe's rosy face in its cradle,--all these things had power, and were weaving about him a rapid spell. "What does that childish, ignorant young thing know of love, Philip? If some rustic fellow with rosy cheeks, who could not write his own name, had been the first to ask her, she would have said 'Yes' just as prettily as she did to you. But I have been tried--I know others, myself, and you. My judgment and my pride approve my affection. Then the West is no place for a man like you. You used to be ambitious--to plan out high things for your future. I adore ambition in a man. I would not have him sit at my feet day and night, and make no effort to conquer renown. I would have him great, that I might honor his greatness. I would aspire with and for him. You might be a shining light here, Philip, where it is a glory to shine. Why will you throw yourself away upon a rude and uncultivated community? Stay here a week or two longer, and think better of the mode of life you have chosen." The moon hung in the heavens, high and pure, drawing the tides of the ocean, whose sighs they could almost hear; and like the moon, fair and serene, the memory of Alice Wilde hung in the heaven of Philip's heart, calming the earthly tide of passion which beat and murmured in his breast. He remembered that touching assurance of hers that she would sacrifice _herself_ for him, at any time, and he could not think her love was a chance thing, which would have been given to a commoner man just as readily. "I have tarried too long already, Virginia; I must go to-morrow." He did not go on the morrow; for while they stood there upon the balcony in the summer moonshine, a servant came hastily with word, that the master of the house was again stricken down, in his library, as he sat reading the evening paper.