Hargrave stood silent for some moments. Fain would he have framed a resistless petition; for the events of that day had hastened the unravelling of a tale which, once known to Laura, would, he knew, make all his petitions vain. But his impatient spirit could not wait to conciliate; and, seizing her hand, he said, with breathless eagerness, 'Laura, you once said that you loved me, and I believed you. Now to the proof--and if that fail--But I will not distract myself with the thought. You have allowed me a distant hope. Recall your sentence of delay. Circumstances which you cannot--must not know, leave you but one alternative. Be mine now, or you are for ever lost to me.' Astonished at his words, alarmed by the ill-suppressed vehemence of his manner, Laura tried to read his altered countenance, and feared she knew not what. 'Tell me what you mean?' said she. 'What mean these strange words--these wild looks. Why have you come at this late hour?' 'Ask me nothing,' cried Hargrave, 'but decide. Speak. Will you be mine--now--to-morrow--within a few hours. Soon, very soon, it will be no longer possible for you to choose.' A hectic of resentment kindled in Laura's cheek at the threat of desertion which she imagined to lurk beneath the words of Hargrave. 'You have,' said she, 'I know not how, extended my conditional promise to receive you as a friend far beyond what the terms of it could warrant. In making even such an engagement, perhaps I condescended too far. But, admitting it in your own sense, what right have you to suppose that I am to be weakly terrified into renouncing a resolution formed on the best grounds?' 'I have no right to expect it,' said Hargrave, in a voice of misery. 'I came to you in desperation. I cannot--will not survive the loss of you; and if I prevail not now, you must be lost to me.' 'What means this strange, this presuming haste?' said Laura. 'Why do you seem thus wretched?' 'I am, indeed, most wretched. Oh Laura, thus on my knees I conjure you to have pity on me;--or, if it will cost you a pang to lose me, have pity on yourself. And if thy love be too feeble to bend thy stubborn will, let a father's wishes, a father's prayers, come to its aid.' 'Oh Hargrave,' cried Laura, bursting into tears, 'how have I deserved that you should lay on me this heavy load--that you should force me to resist the entreaties of my father.' 'Do not--Oh do not resist them. Let a father's prayers--let the pleadings of a wretch whose reason, whose life depends upon you, prevail to move you.' 'Nothing shall move me,' said Laura, with the firmness of despair, 'for I am used to misery, and will bear it.' 'And will you bear it too if driven from virtuous love--from domestic joy, I turn to the bought smile of harlots, forget you in the haunts of riot, or in the grave of a suicide?'