"No, no; say nothing now," said he impetuously. "I have been premature. You do not know your own heart. You do love me,--you will love me. You must not, you shall not deny me the privilege of hope. I will maintain the vantage ground on which I stand,--first friend, first lover, and even Ernest Linwood cannot drive me from it." "Ernest Linwood!" I exclaimed, startled and indignant. "You know he can never be any thing to me. You know my immeasurable obligations to his mother. His name shall be sacred from levity." "It is. He is the last person whom I would lightly name. He has brilliant talents and a splendid position; but woe to the woman who places her happiness in his keeping. He confides in no one,--so the world describes him,--is jealous and suspicious even in friendship;--what would he be in love?" "I know not. I care not,--only for his mother's and Edith's sake. Again I say, he is nothing to me. Richard, you trouble me very much by your strange way of talking. You have no idea how you have made my head ache. Please speak of common subjects, for I would not meet Mrs. Linwood so troubled, so agitated, for any consideration. See how beautiful the sunlight falls is the lawn! How graceful that white cloud floats down the golden west! As Wilson says:-- 'Even in its very motion there is rest.'" "Yes! the sunlight is very beautiful, and the cloud is very graceful, and you are beautiful and graceful in your dawning coquetry, the more so because you know it not. Well--obedience to-day, reward to-morrow, Gabriella. That was one of my old copies at the academy." "I remember another, which was a favorite of Mr. Regulus-- 'To-morrow never yet On any human being rose and set.'" A few more light repartees, and we were at Mrs. Linwood's gate. "You will not come in?" said I, half asserting, half interrogating. "To be sure I will. Edith promised me some of her angelic harp music. I come like Saul to have the evil spirit of discontent subdued by its divine influence." Richard was a favorite of Mrs. Linwood. Whether it was that by a woman's intuition she discovered the state of feeling existing between us, or whether it was his approaching departure, she was especially kind to him this evening; she expressed a more than usual interest in his future prospects.