“Dear Em., keep your seat; I have got something that I must tell you in a plain, honest, straightforward way, even although you may know it well enough already. May I tell you now, this moment?” inquired the young man, as he drew a foot-stool and seated himself at the feet of the sleeping veteran, and very near to her also, it must be confessed. “Dear Em., dearest Em., may I tell you now?” he repeated. “Ronald, is it anything you would tell me in the presence of my mother?” timidly questioned the girl. “Yes! in the presence of the whole world, if necessary.” “Well, then—say on,” whispered Em. “Em. Palmer, I haven’t been like other young fellows, falling in and out of love with almost every pretty girl I ever saw since I was five years old! No! I have been to sea ever since I was a child, and I never, never, _never_ knew what it was to love a girl, the least in the world, until I met you.” “Oh! _do_ please don’t talk so! I _know_ you wouldn’t talk so to me if my mother was sitting there right before us!” murmured Em., beginning to tremble. “May I never be saved if I would not! I would tell you I love you if all the mothers, fathers, aunts, and uncles, and guardians in Christendom were sitting on stiff, high-backed chairs in a circle around us! There! For it is the blessed truth! I _do_ love you, Em., with all my heart and soul and life! I began to love you from the first moment I ever saw you! Yes, and I perceived that you also began to love me about the same time!” he added triumphantly. “Oh, Ronald,” breathed Em., her face dyed with blushes, “was I so forward?” “‘Forward!’ No. You little, sensitive plant. The opposite of all that—so shrinking you were! But, oh, Em., I began to love you from the first moment I ever saw you, and I have loved you more and more ever since; and the more I have loved you the more my spirit has gone forth in good-will to all the world. My heart was as pure and fresh as your own, Em., and no heart could be purer and fresher when I gave it to you; and that heart has remained as true and constant as your own, Em., through these years of absence and silence, when no word of love or of plighted faith had passed between us!” “Oh, Ronald, Ronald, I am so frightened,” she murmured. “Why should you be even uneasy? Listen, love! Listen, loveliest! By all the signs I have told you do I know that ours is the real, true, holy, heavenly love, and not one of its plausible counterfeits.” “Oh, Ronald, is it right for you to talk to me in this way?” she breathed. “Right? It is righteous!” “Ah, how can it end? You are a young gentleman of rank and wealth; I, a poor, half educated girl, the child of a man of the laboring classes.”