"'As Heaven is my judge, I am. In less than an hour this train will arrive at the station where, in all probability, we shall have to part. I cannot endure to think that in a formal shake of the hand at a railway-dépôt you and I are going to separate, never perhaps to meet in this world again. Both of us have made plenty of such impromptu acquaintances before now, and have seen the end of them approach with the utmost indifference, and never given another thought to these chance friendships of a passing hour. But I feel in my innermost heart that this meeting between you and me was brought about by the hand of Providence itself, and for a purpose that we at this early stage of our knowledge of each other cannot divine. I will not, I cannot, see it fade away. Will you give me leave to come and see you at Hurville?' "'With pleasure,' I replied. "He sprang to my side as I assented, pressing against me so closely that I withdrew myself hastily lest it should become an open embrace. Yet even as I repulsed him he smiled fondly on me and said in a tender voice, 'Thank you, my friend: this is all I ask. I shall soon see you again, and I warn you I shall see you often. I am willing to take my chances for the future. Time will try me.' "'Come, come!' I answered: 'these hints and insinuations are mere folly. It would be disingenuous in me to pretend not to understand them; but let them stop here: let us banish all nonsense. I am older than yourself by some years, and when you become better acquainted with me you will find that there is nothing in the least extraordinary about me. I am simply a middle-aged, might even be called an old, woman, wrapped up in a pleasant but very unromantic set of friends, and with all the love of my nature buried in the grave of a dead past, except what survives in the persons of those two sizable young ladies who sit nodding opposite.' "'Every word you say,' he said, again drawing near to me in an affectionate way, 'but confirms the impression you first made upon me. I think you are a woman of the noblest nature, the soundest sense, the warmest heart, I ever met. I admire you as much, as deeply, as I respect you. But this you must permit me to say: you are doing yourself a great injustice by laying out for yourself a loveless future. You will feel the heart-void very powerfully when your daughters leave you. You are _not_ an old woman, even in years, while in appearance you are not even middle-aged: no one would dream of your being the mother of these young ladies. Now, is it right in a woman so exceptionally endowed with affections as you are to say you will never love again? Leave the future to take care of itself: you do not know what it has in store for you.'