"Hush--hush, Lucy! you will drive me mad. Is my happiness of less value in your eyes than the few paltry dollars my mother expended for you?" "Shall I, serpent-like, sting the hand that has fed me? No! no! would I had never heard those words. We were so happy--you will be happy again--but I--leave me, I pray you, for we must part now and for ever--oh! leave me." "No, Lucy, we will never part--I will never leave you." He would again have drawn her to his side, but at his touch, Lucy roused herself, and with a wild, half-frenzied effort, breaking from him, she rushed rapidly, blindly forward. He would have followed her, but stumbling against the root of a tree, before he could recover himself she was at the outskirts of the wood, in sight of the farm-house, and though he might overtake he could not detain her. He returned home, not overwhelmed with disappointment, but with joy throbbing at his heart, and hope beaming in his eyes. Lucy loved him--of that he felt assured--and bucklered by that assurance he could stand against the world. Life was before him--a life not of sickly pleasures and _ennui_ breeding indolence--but a life of contest and struggle and labor, perhaps even of exhausting labor, yet a life which should awaken and discipline his powers: a life of victory and of repose--sweet because won with effort--a life to which Lucy's love should give its crowning joy. Such are youth's dreams. In his case these dreams were somewhat rudely dispelled by a summons from his mother's physician. Lady Houstoun was ill--very ill--he must not delay, said the physician; and he did not; yet a hastily pencilled line told that even at this moment Lucy was not forgotten--it was a farewell which breathed love and faith and hope.