"Hear me but a little longer. I need not dwell to you upon the event which has occurred since I left Scotland, and which has left me a free man--free to enjoy legitimately that happiness, a dream of which dawned upon me at Kilsyth, and which I shut out and put aside because it was then wrong, and almost unattainable. Circumstances are now so altered, that it is certainly not the former, and it is yet to be proved whether, so far as the young lady is concerned, it is the latter. In my desire to do right, even with the feeling of relief and release which I had, even with the hope which I do not scruple to confess I have nourished, I kept from Brook-street until a line from Miss Kilsyth summoned me thither. When you met me yesterday, I was there in obedience to her summons. You know that, I suppose, Captain Kilsyth?'" "I made inquiries yesterday, and heard so. I said at the outset, Dr. Wilmot, that you were a man of honour. Your conduct since your return, and since the return of my family, weighed with me in the utterance of that opinion." "I did not go to Brook-street--not that I did not fully comprehend the change in the nature of my position since I had last seen Miss Kilsyth, not that I had not a certain half-latent feeling of hope that I might, now I had the legitimate chance, be enabled to rouse an interest in her, but because I thought it was perhaps better to stay away. If I did not see her again, I preposterously attempted to argue to myself, the feeling that I had for her might die out. I have seen her again. I have heard from you that my feelings towards your sister are known--at least to you; and now I ask you whether you still think that, under existing circumstances, it is impossible for me to ask Miss Kilsyth to be my wife at some future date?"