He said this honestly; for she had never in plain terms owned to him that she loved him, and he, in the humility of a man’s first love, saw himself unworthy of her by as much as he adored her, and therefore did not imagine himself capable of eliciting from her what he felt for her. Her indulgence he ascribed to the pity of a gentle heart for one whose situation, both as a refugee and as a lover, pleaded for him while his courtesy and honour gave assurance that her tenderness was safe from betrayal. If her heart desired him to stay near her, he supposed, ’twas because it hesitated to put him to the unhappiness of leaving her. That she might suffer on her own account in his absence, did not occur to him: she herself was all loveliness, and where she was, there would all loveliness be; what was he that she should find him necessary to make the world complete? Were his presence needful to her content, she would not limit their meetings to so few moments in a long day. Thus he thought, or, rather, thus he felt without analyzing the feeling. “’Tis the duty of my compassion, then,” she answered, “to drive you away. I am more convinced of it now than ever. Such foreboding, such misgiving!—why do I feel so? I pray Heaven ’tis not yet too late.—Hark! what was that?” “’Tis only the master and his guests a-laughing over their dissipations,” said Prudence, near whom the lovers happened at the moment to be standing. “They’ve left the window open, ma’am.” “See how easily you are frightened without cause,” said Everell. “Come, has not the mood run its course?” “Blame me not that I bid you go, Everell!” she replied, as if not to be reassured. “You may come to blame me that I ever stayed to hear you!” “For that dear fault my heart will thank you while it moves.” “It _was_ a fault!—I see now that it was. I was so solitary, so rebellious against my uncle and his company, that when you came my heart seemed to know you as a friend; and I listened to you.” “Ay, sweet listener that you were! What effect your listening had upon me! I had wished to return to France, which in exile I had grown up to love. This England, though I was born in it, was to me a strange country, but you have made it home!” He raised both her hands to his lips, while she stood irresolute, her eyes searching his face for the secret of his confidence, which she would have rejoiced to think better warranted than her fears. The silence was suddenly broken by a slight, brief noise in the greenery near the steps. “What’s that?” she said, quickly. “The wind,” replied Everell; but the sudden straightening of his body, and fixity of his attention upon the place of the sound, betrayed his doubt. “No,” whispered Georgiana, “’twas quite different.” “Some animal moving among the shrubs,” said Everell. “I’ll go and see.”