Gertie had been very restless the entire day, and when at last the sun went down, and there wanted but a few hours of the time when Godfrey was to return, her cheeks were burning with fever, and she was far more fit for bed than for the summer-house, where the fog from the river was making itself felt, and the night damp was falling. But I could not persuade her. Godfrey had said: “Wait for me here when the moon comes over the hills,” and she would do it if a hundred fevers had been burning in her veins. She had no hope, she said, that Colonel Schuyler would relent, and if he did not she must keep her vow, though her heart broke in doing it. Still I think there was a shadowy hope, which buoyed her up during the first half hour of waiting. She had expected him to be with her before the moon came over the hill, and when the first silvery light fell on the opposite shore, and the woods began to grow less dark and sombre, she grew restless and nervous, and complained of being cold, while the bright flush faded from her cheeks and lips, and left them pale as marble. The whole river now was flecked with patches of moonlight, and the summer-house, with the shrubbery around it, began to stand out in shadows, as the moon crept higher and higher up the eastern horizon. And still he did not come, and Gertie’s teeth were chattering and her hair was wet with dew, and I was about to insist upon her going in, when through the stillness a footstep sounded,—a rapid, elastic footstep,—and we heard next a merry whistle on the road not far away. Godfrey was coming; he had been successful, or he would never have come so blithely. So Gertie thought,—so I believed, and I stole away to the house, leaving the lovers alone in their interview, which lasted more than an hour, and at its close left the two young hearts which loved each other so fondly, sore and full of pain. For Gertie would not break her word so solemnly pledged. “I love you so much,” she said, when he had exhausted every argument in his power to win her to his opinion, “and I would so gladly be poor with you, and work so hard for you if I could do it without sin; but I cannot; I promised I would not marry you without your father’s consent, and I must keep my word. But I did not promise not to love you, and I can do that and will, forever and ever. And now good-by. Don’t go to the house with me. Don’t kiss me,” she cried, as he made a motion to clasp her in his arms. “You must not do that; and, Godfrey, you say you shall leave Hampstead to-morrow. Don’t part from your father in anger. Don’t for my sake; and, Godfrey—” her voice shook a little here—“and-and—try to love Alice,—do,—and be happy with her,—and—never mind about me.”