"Dear divine girl, my own exalted Isabel!" cried Pierre, catching the offered hand with ungovernable emotion, "how most unbeseeming, that this strange hardness, and this still stranger littleness should be united in any human hand. But hard and small, it by an opposite analogy hints of the soft capacious heart that made the hand so hard with heavenly submission to thy most undeserved and martyred lot. Would, Isabel, that these my kisses on the hand, were on the heart itself, and dropt the seeds of eternal joy and comfort there." He leaped to his feet, and stood before her with such warm, god-like majesty of love and tenderness, that the girl gazed up at him as though he were the one benignant star in all her general night. "Isabel," cried Pierre, "I stand the sweet penance in my father's stead, thou, in thy mother's. By our earthly acts we shall redeemingly bless both their eternal lots; we will love with the pure and perfect love of angel to an angel. If ever I fall from thee, dear Isabel, may Pierre fall from himself; fall back forever into vacant nothingness and night!" "My brother, my brother, speak not so to me; it is too much; unused to any love ere now, thine, so heavenly and immense, falls crushing on me! Such love is almost hard to bear as hate. Be still; do not speak to me." They were both silent for a time; when she went on. "Yes, my brother, Fate had now brought me within three miles of thee; and--but shall I go straight on, and tell thee all, Pierre? all? every thing? art thou of such divineness, that I may speak straight on, in all my thoughts, heedless whither they may flow, or what things they may float to me?" "Straight on, and fearlessly," said Pierre. "By chance I saw thy mother, Pierre, and under such circumstances that I _knew_ her to be thy mother; and--but shall I go on?" "Straight on, my Isabel; thou didst see my mother--well?" "And when I saw her, though I spake not to her, nor she to me, yet straightway my heart knew that she would love me not." "Thy heart spake true," muttered Pierre to himself; "go on." "I re-swore an oath never to reveal myself to thy mother." "Oath well sworn," again he muttered; "go on." "But I saw _thee_, Pierre; and, more than ever filled my mother toward thy father, Pierre, then upheaved in me. Straightway I knew that if ever I should come to be made known to thee, then thy own generous love would open itself to me." "Again thy heart spake true," he murmured; "go on--and didst thou re-swear again?" "No, Pierre; but yes, I did. I swore that thou wert my brother; with love and pride I swore, that young and noble Pierre Glendinning was my brother!" "And only that?" "Nothing more, Pierre; not to thee even, did I ever think to reveal myself." "How then? thou _art_ revealed to me." "Yes; but the great God did it, Pierre--not poor Bell. Listen.