“Even so I judged of you,” answered Alice; “and therefore I asked this interview, to conjure that you will break off all intercourse with our family--return to your parents--or, what will be much safer, visit the continent once more, and abide till God send better days to England, for these are black with many a storm.” “And can you bid me go, Alice?” said the young man, taking her unresisting hand; “can you bid me go, and yet own an interest in my fate?--Can you bid me, for fear of dangers, which, as a man, as a gentleman, and a loyal one, I am bound to show my face to, meanly abandon my parents, my friends, my country--suffer the existence of evils which I might aid to prevent--forego the prospect of doing such little good as might be in my power--fall from an active and honourable station, into the condition of a fugitive and time-server--Can you bid me do all this, Alice? Can you bid me do all this, and, in the same breath, bid farewell for ever to you and happiness?--It is impossible--I cannot surrender at once my love and my honour.” “There is no remedy,” said Alice, but she could not suppress a sigh while she said so--“there is no remedy--none whatever. What we might have been to each other, placed in more favourable circumstances, it avails not to think of now; and, circumstanced as we are, with open war about to break out betwixt our parents and friends, we can be but well-wishers--cold and distant well-wishers, who must part on this spot, and at this hour, never meet again.” “No, by Heaven!” said Peveril, animated at the same time by his own feelings, and by the sight of the emotions which his companion in vain endeavoured to suppress,--“No, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, “we part not--Alice, we part not. If I am to leave my native land, you shall be my companion in my exile. What have you to lose?--Whom have you to abandon?--Your father?--The good old cause, as it is termed, is dearer to him than a thousand daughters; and setting him aside, what tie is there between you and this barren isle--between my Alice and any spot of the British dominions, where her Julian does not sit by her?” “O Julian,” answered the maiden, “why make my duty more painful by visionary projects, which you ought not to name, or I to listen to? Your parents--my father--it cannot be!”