"Stir the fire, Charles Marston," replied his fair companion: "the cold east wind has made you melancholy. Now, for the last three-quarters of an hour I have myself been much more sober and reflective than is at all proper and right, and I do not choose to be encouraged in such bad habits by the seriousness of anybody else." "What can have made _you_ serious?" asked Charles Marston, in a tone of doubt, his eyes fixed upon the paper on which Lady Anne had been sketching. "Your gravity must have been somewhat frolicsome." "Good heaven! did I draw all that?" she exclaimed, looking down at the paper to which he pointed. "I was not in the least aware of it." "Nay, then you must have been serious indeed," replied Charles Marston, with a tone both of surprise and sympathy. "What can have happened to oppress your light heart?" "What can have happened to oppress yours, Charles?" rejoined Lady Anne. "Something must have occurred, I am sure; for, though I have known you from childhood, I never saw you in such a mood till now. What is it?" "A change of fortune, dear Lady Anne," he said, "implying the relinquishment of the dearest and fondest hopes my heart ever entertained--hopes and wishes which, though treated gaily, lightly perhaps, were not the less deeply rooted, the less profoundly felt." He paused for a moment, as if summoning strength to go on with a task that nearly overpowered him, and she sat gazing on his face with a look of anxious alarm. At length he proceeded-- "I have loved you, Lady Anne, deeply, sincerely, well, I can assure you----" "I know all that," she exclaimed, resuming for a moment her gay and sparkling manner: "you told me so twelve months ago, in Rome; you told me so years ago, when I was a foolish girl of thirteen; and I believed you both times. What have I done that you should cease to love me now?" "Cease to love you!" exclaimed Charles Marston. "I love you better--more dearly than ever: just as one prizes a jewel, the last possession that one has, which he knows must be parted with soon." "No, you do not love me," she said, "or you would not keep me in suspense. What has happened, Charles?--tell me at once what has happened."