had, indeed, taken great trouble to conceal my identity. But when _you_ praised my work, I flung prudence to the winds. It was so delightful to see your bright blush, your bewitching confusion, when I told you that it was my happiness to have pleased you. O Celia, if you like my book so well, why is it that you distrust and avoid me? Let me see you, dear, I implore--anywhere--at any time--under any conditions you may choose to impose upon me. I wait in this dull town, day after day, in the hope of seeing you. A hundred duties call me away! and yet I wait. I shall wait for a week after having posted this letter; and if I receive no sign from you during that time, I shall leave Bayham, never again to venture within its fatal precincts. “Ever and ever faithfully yours, “H.” There was an interval of six weeks between the dates of the second and third letters; and there was a considerable alteration in the tone of the writer. He no longer pleaded for an interview with the stationer’s daughter. It was evident that he had seen her very often during the interval; and his letter was full of allusions to past meetings. “MY OWN SWEET LOVE,” he began,--(ah, what a change in six short weeks from “My dear Miss Mayfield!”)--“my ever dearest, there is _no_ gulf between us, or no gulf so wide that love cannot bridge it over. Why are you so cruel as to doubt and avoid me? You know that I love you. You told me that you believed in my love last night when we stood by the sea in that sweet twilight, and when there was such a solemn quiet all around us that it would have been easy to fancy ourselves cast away upon some desert island. You talk to me of your humble birth,--as if the birth of an angel or a goddess could be humble,--and you implore me to go back to the world and its slavery, and to forget this bright glimpse of something better than the world. I am only five-and-twenty, Celia; and yet I fancied I had outlived the possibility of such love as that which I feel for you.