"Are you sorry, Emily? Will you miss me, and will you write to me, and will your dark eyes read the words I send to you?" Dumb, more dumb than before, I sighed and bowed my head, and again he spoke, this time with that strange, terribly earnest look in his eyes I had seen before. "Oh, Emily! my dear Emily! I am only a boy in years, but I love you with the strength of a man. I have saved the life of your brother because I loved his sister; and," he added in a low tone, "I love him too, but not as I do the dark eyes of his sister. Oh! Emily, do you love me? Can you and will you love me, and me only?" And he drew me to him almost fiercely, while I quivered in every nerve, and answered: "Louis, do you know me well? Can you not understand my heart? How can I help loving you?" He loosened his grasp about me, and as his arm fell from my waist, tears fell at his feet. Oh, what a nature was his! Then turning again to me--"Will you wear this?" and a ring of turquoise and pearls was slipped on my finger, while in his hand he held a richly-carved shell comb. "This is for your midnight hair Emily, wear it always," and he placed it among the coils of my hair. Silence followed for a little time, and then Louis with his soulful eyes fixed on something afar off, spoke with great fervor of the life he longed for. "Emily, you do not know me yet," he said. "I know you better than you know yourself, but I am to you a puzzle, and oh, if I could skip the years that lie between to-day and the day when you and I shall really understand each other! Perfect in peace that day I know will come, but there are clouds between. My father willed that I should have this education I am getting. I need it, I suppose, but I have greater needs, and cannot tell you about them till I am free." "Two years--twenty-four months;" and his eyes fell, as he added despairingly, "What a long time to wait." Then turning to me, "But you will love me, you have said so?" I looked my thoughts, and he answered them. "Do not ever think so of me, I am only too sane, I have found my life before the time." "Oh! Louis," I cried, and then he answered with the words, "My little mother knows it--she knows I love you. She knows my inmost soul, and answers me with her pure eyes. But ah! her eyes have not the light of yours; I want you to myself, to help me, and I will love you all my life." I was amazed, and wondered why it was--this strange boy had been much in society, and why should I, an unsophisticated, homely girl, bring such a shower of feeling on myself. "Could it be real and would it last?" He comprehended my thought again and replied: