“How I have lived since that time I can hardly tell you,” he continued as he pressed my hand. (I knew it ought not to remain in his, but it was so sweet to feel it there.) “I have had very little hope, or peace, or happiness, though I have struggled on through it all, and made myself a name in my profession. And then to meet you again to-night so unexpectedly, still free, but promised to another, myself and my love so evidently forgotten, and to feel that it has been but a chance that separated us! Oh, Lizzie, it is almost harder than it was at first.” “I am not engaged,” I answered, sobbing; “you choose to take my words at the piano as meaning so, but it was your mistake, not mine. I have lived much in the manner you describe yourself to have done--not very happily, perhaps, and finding my best relief in work. But I am glad to have met you, Bruce--glad to have heard from your own lips what parted us; and I thank you for this explanation, though it comes too late.” “But why too late, my dearest?” he exclaimed joyfully. “Why, if you are free to accept my hand, and can forgive all that has made us so unhappy in the past, should we not bury our mutual trouble in mutual love? Oh, Lizzie, say that you’ll be mine--say that you’ll be my own wife, and help me to wipe out the remembrance of this miserable mistake!” I thought of Amy. I looked at him with astonishment; I recoiled from him almost with disgust. Was I to accept happiness at the expense of that of my dear friends, of the only creatures who had shown me any affection during my long years of exile from him? Oh no. I would rather perish in my solitude. The very fact that he could propose it to me made him sink lower in my estimation. “Bruce!” I exclaimed, “you must be mad, or I am mad so to tempt you from your duty. Think of all your offer involves--of the distress, the disappointment, the shame it would entail on those who have been more than friends to me; and consider if it is likely I could be so dishonourable to them as to take advantage of it.” “I don’t understand you, my darling,” he said, with a puzzled look. “Not understand?” I reiterated, in surprise, “when your engagement to Amy Rodwell was only settled this morning, and the preliminaries for your marriage are already being talked of! Would you break her heart in the attempt to heal mine? Bruce, we must never see each other again after this evening.” “Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie!” he said, shaking his head, “we are playing at dreadful cross-purposes. Did it never enter into your wise little pate to inquire _which_ Mr. Armytage was going to marry Amy Rodwell? I can assure you I have no desire or intention to risk getting a pistol-shot through my heart for stepping into my cousin Frederick’s shoes.” “And is it really--is it really, then, _Frederick_ whom she is going to marry?” I exclaimed, breathless with the shock of this new intelligence. “Oh, how can she?”