"If you mean what you say, there is happiness yet in store for us. Oh, St. Elmo! how often have I longed to come and lay my head down on your bosom, and tell you all. But you were so stern and harsh I was afraid. To-day when I saw you melted, when the look of your boyhood came dancing back to your dear eyes, I was encouraged to hope that your heart had softened also toward one, who so long possessed it. Is there hope for your poor Agnes? Hope that the blind, silly girl, who, ignorant of the value of the treasure, slighted and spurned it, may indeed be pardoned, when, as a woman realizing her folly, and sensible at last of the nobility of a nature she once failed to appreciate, she comes and says--what it is so hard for a woman to say--'Take me back to your heart, gather me up in your arms, as in the olden days, because--because I love you now; because only your love can make me happy.' St. Elmo, we are no longer young; but believe me when I tell you that at last--at last--your own Agnes loves you as she never loved any one, even in her girlhood. Once I preferred my cousin Murray to you; but think how giddy I must have been, when I could marry before a year had settled the sod on his grave? I did not love my husband, but I married him for the same reason that I would have married you then. And yet for that there is some palliation. It was to save my father from disgrace that I sacrificed myself; for money entrusted to his keeping--money belonging to his orphan ward--had been used by him in a ruinous speculation, and only prompt repayment could prevent exposure. Remember I was so young, so vain, so thoughtless then! St. Elmo, pity me! love me! take me back to your heart! God is my witness that I do love you entirely now! Dearest, say, 'Agnes, I will forgive all, and trust you and love you as in the days long past.'" She tried to put her arms up around his neck and to rest her head on his shoulder; but he resisted and put her at arm's length from him. Holding her there, he looked at her with a cold scorn in his eyes, and a heavy shadow darkening the brow that five minutes before had been so calm, so bright. "Agnes, how dare you attempt to deceive me after all that has passed between us? Oh, woman! In the name of all true womanhood I could blush for you!" She struggled to free herself, to get closer to him, but his stern grasp was relentless; and as tears poured down her cheeks, she clasped her hands and sobbed out: