“Tell me, John,” she said, seizing his hands, and speaking in low, rapid tones, tremulous with emotion—“this pitiful insult moved me to anger, and in my anger I have spoken the true thought of my heart—tell me that so dear a hope is not so vain. Oh, confide in me as in your own mother, for no mother could love you more tenderly than I do.” In the spiritual passion of the moment, all cold prudence, all reticence, melted, and fell away. He clasped her in his arms, and with sweet and sorrowful emotion, kissed her fair brow and silver hair. “I love her, my mother,” he murmured, sadly smiling—“I love her, but the love I once thought mine, is not for me.” “You love her—you love Muriel, and she does not love you! I do not believe it—I cannot. John, at my age women are not easily deceived—they do not mistake the tokens of love. Take care that you are sure of what you say”— “I am sure, mother, I am sure,” he interrupted, in a low voice. “Her accepted lover told me of his happiness to-day. Do not ask me his name. They themselves will tell you. Hush!” The hall-door was heard closing, and the voices talking gaily in the hall. She looked at him wonderingly for an instant, then quickly pressed her lips to his drooping forehead, and glided from his arms to the back-door of the parlor, out of which she passed up to her chamber, as the others came in. Witherlee had departed as the escort of Miss Julia, his natural impudence perfectly ignoring the rebuff he had received from her mother. “Where’s Mrs. Eastman?” said Emily. “She went out as you came in,” replied Harrington. “John,” said Muriel, coming up to him, and playfully shaking her finger. “You quite discomfited poor Uncle Lemuel, and he went off as cross as a bear.” “What a memory Harrington has!” laughed Wentworth. “To think that he gave him Burke and Webster plump! That was a double-barrelled shot, by Jupiter!” “Oh, it was capital,” chimed in Emily. “Faith,” said Harrington, “it was simply lucky. I happened to have been reading the speeches lately, and so had the passages by heart. But I wonder at Mr. Atkins making such an absurd assertion.” “Oh, he remembers nothing previous to 1850,” said Muriel. “These people are perfectly wild with their Webster and Fugitive Slave Law mania, and they repeat certain phrases until their organs of intelligence are ossified, as Goethe says. Come, Emily, let us have some music.” “Yes, do, Emily,” said Wentworth, half absently, and forgetting for a moment, as was frequent with him, the state of affairs between him and Miss Ames. Emily looked at him with cool serenity, as if she thought his request impertinent. Wentworth, recalled to himself, was maddened by the look and all it brought him, and turning to conceal his anger, wandered away to the piano, humming an air. “Come, Emily, we must go home, for it’s getting late,” said Harrington; “so sing us that sweet song of Körner’s—the ‘Good Night’ song—to sooth us to dreams.”