“_Fact_ I am telling you—listen now again. I have watched her—_have I not?_ She will caress _me_ right before her aunt’s face, freely and calmly as though I were her grandmother—then dropping her arms from around my neck, she will call Juno and caress _her_ with equal affection! and then my uncle, she always runs to meet him and throws herself in his arms when he comes! and yourself, you remember how she received you, with a gentle affectionate welcome, as though you were an accredited candidate for a share of her universal love.” “Are you betrothed?” “Certainly, these many weeks, and when I talk of marriage she blushes and smiles, it is true, but not with love! only with a bashful repugnance to make herself a prominent object of attention as a bride. Yet she tells me she loves me! Oh, yes, she loves me! and the next minute she will throw her arms around Juno’s neck and tell her she loves _her_! and with _equal fervor_. And if ever I complain to her that she does not love me, she weeps as though I did her an injury. Nearly three months have I spent in trying to kindle one spark, to touch one chord of responsive passion in her bosom. I have poured my whole soul forth at her feet, and she looks at me with her calm, sweet eyes, and wonders at me, I know she does, for a sort of Orlando Furioso, and drives me nearly distracted by insisting that she _does_ love me, when I feel that she does _not_, or even know what she is talking about. I would give my commission to see her blush, tremble, shrink when I caress her—the devil of it is that she loves me like a baby loves her grandmother, nor does she dream of, nor can I awaken her to any other love! Her affections, her caresses are freely bestowed upon man, woman, child, or beast alike. I have never seen her shrink with averted eyes from the eye or conversation of but _one_ man, and _that_ was not in the first part of their acquaintance, it was only just before they parted, and now that I recall it, great God! it comes up before me in a new light,” said Gusty, in his impetuosity forgetting to whom he was talking—“they were standing where we now stand. I was near them. He was speaking to her of unimportant matters, the names of the ships, &c., he was looking at her. I being on the other side of him could not see his eyes, but suddenly she raised _her_ eyes. I felt that she met _his_—her color came and went, her bosom rose and fell, then turning around she held her hand out to me, with her face averted. I drew it through my arm and carried her off for a promenade. That hour I quietly ascribed her disturbance to bashfulness or fear, but _now_ that I recall it in connexion with the subject of our conversation, a new, a dreadful light seems to break over it, but no! Oh, God! _that_ would be too dreadful!” “But what man was this, then?” Gusty had suddenly grown quite white, and now the color rushed into his face, crimsoning his brow, and swelling the veins like cords.