"Where is your sketch-book?" he hastily said, looking away from her glowing face; but his eyes went lingeringly to other things. "You have it in your hand! What are you thinking of, Mi--, Mr. Tremenhere?" she hastily substituted. The sketch-book fell from his hand, and he grasped hers involuntarily, and the deep, dark eye grew full of passion, as it fixed itself on her face. "Call me," he whispered, "by that half-uttered name, and I will tell you why I always recall to my memory our difference of age." But she was silent, trembling, and incapable of speech. "_Do_ say it; pray, utter it this once, and I will dare to believe you will not forget me--a poor, lonely man--when I go." "I shall never forget you, Miles Tremenhere," she answered, gravely looking up. There was no blush or hesitation: there was only truth, and its ever accompanying fearlessness. "Do you know, child," he exclaimed almost painfully, as he clasped her hand convulsively, "what you are doing this day? You are bending a strong, stern man, to womanly weakness; you are tearing every other thought from my heart, to engraft yourself there. Minnie, I have dreaded this moment; yet I had not the courage to fly you. I have said every day, 'To-morrow;' and that morrow has never come in which I could quit this neighbourhood." "Hush!" she cried in alarm, looking round; "I heard a footstep." Her voice trembled with many emotions. "There's no one here," he answered, scarcely glancing round. "It was perhaps my heart you heard beat; there are footfalls in that--those of remorse for my weakness--those of my mother's spirit deserting me; for I have sworn _only_ to think of her. And yet, Minnie, do you know, amidst all this wild passion to-day, which your word, your utterance of my name, has called forth, I am not _sure_ I truly love you! Were I certain of that, nothing could ever reconcile me to a separation from you. I would strain every nerve of my soul to make you love me; and, loving thus, ask you to be mine--in toil and poverty perhaps--assured that _nothing_ could surpass in misery, separation from each other." "Is your heart more difficult for you to read, than mine is for myself?" she asked, looking up in child-like confidence. "Mine is an open page, I _know_----" "Do not speak what you _think_ you read there, Minnie; hearts are deceitful things, like words in dead tongues: we must search well, to define the real signification of things written there. Love has a counterfeit--passion. If I knew mine, purely, truly yours, worthy of you--or if I knew you truly loved me--there is not that power on earth which should part us!" "Surely," she whispered, in terror grasping his arm, "there is some one in that archway, yonder--I heard a step!"