She looked at me with speechless embarrassment, sighed deeply, and a tear stole down her cheek. At length, withdrawing her hand, she said, in almost a whisper, and with an evident effort, "This must not be. I feel infinite honour in your good opinion--deeply grateful for your kindness. But this must not be. No. I should rather wear this habit for my life, than make so ungenerous a return to the noble spirit that can thus offer its friendship to a stranger." "No, Clotilde, no. Again, in my turn, I say, this must not be; you are _no_ stranger. I know you at this hour as well as if I had known you from the first hour of my being. I gave my heart to you from the moment when I first saw you among your countrywomen in England. It required no time to make me feel that you were my fate. It was an instinct, a spell, a voice of nature, a voice of heaven within me!" She listened and trembled. I again took the hand, which was withheld no more. "From that day, Clotilde, you were my thought by day and my dream by night. All my desires of distinction were, that it might be seen by your eye; all my hopes of fortune, that I might be enabled to lay it at your feet. If a throne were offered to me on condition of renouncing you, I should have rejected it. If it were my lot to labour in the humblest rank of life, with _you_ by my side I should have cheerfully laboured; and, with your hand in mine, I should have said, I have found what is worth the world--happiness!" Tears flowed down her cheeks, which were now like marble. She feebly attempted to smile, while, with eyelids drooping, and her whole frame quivering with emotion, she murmured in broken accents, "It is impossible--utterly impossible! leave me. I must not bring you a portionless, a helpless, a nameless being--a mere dependent on your kindness, a burden on your fortune, an obstacle to your whole advance in the world!" A rich flush suddenly lighted up her lovely countenance, and a new splendour flashed from her eyes. She threw back her head loftily, and looking upwards, as if to draw thoughts from above--"Sir," said she, "I am as proud as you. I have had noble ancestors; I have borne a noble name. If that name has fallen, it is in the common wreck of my country. Our fortunes have sunk, only where the monarchy has gone down along with them; and I shall never degrade the memory of those ancestors, nor humiliate still more the fallen name of our house, by imposing my obscurity, my poverty, on one who has honoured me as you have done. Now--farewell! My resolution is fixed. Farewell, my friend! I shall never forget this day." She turned away her face, and wept abundantly; then, fixing a deep look on me, she added--"I own that it would be a consolation to Clotilde de Tourville to believe that she may be sometimes remembered; but, until times change, we meet no more--if they change not, we part for ever."