"Not home, but to the House of Lords," Ponsonby replied. "But, my dear Harriette, I cannot lose you at this moment! Perhaps you were right, and my spirits may have been rather lower than usual to-night! Will you come down with me in a hackney coach as far as the House?" I acquiesced willingly; and when we arrived there I begged to be allowed to wait for him. "I do not care if it should be all night," said I; "for you'll come at last, and we can drive towards your house together." Ponsonby answered that I was very good; but in the greatest despondency. In half an hour he came to the coach-door, to say that the House would sit late and he could not bear the idea of my waiting. "All these things, my dearest Ponsonby," said I, "are mere matters of taste. I am very happy in waiting for you--very!" He did not again return to me for more than three hours. It was daylight. He seemed to be dreadfully unwell and fatigued. I had never seen him thus since the death of his father. He gave me, I think, almost a hundred kisses, without uttering a single word. "You are much fatigued, dear Ponsonby," said I; "I only wish to heaven I might stay with you and take care of you for ever." "I have a letter for you," said Ponsonby, drawing the one which he had written at my house from his pocket, as we drove towards his own home. "You must excuse my taking it," said I; "because, I will tell you frankly, I rather guess that it is to secure me the provision which you have so often talked about." He was peremptory. "I am no liar, Ponsonby," said I, "and, when I most solemnly declare to you that I will never accept of any annuity from you, unless you were to become so rich as to make one without the slightest inconvenience to yourself or your family--I hope you will believe me." I then tore the letter into many pieces and threw it out of the coach-window. Ponsonby seemed almost ashamed of having had so little as two hundred pounds a year to offer; but even that was not without difficulty, for he was most magnificent in his ideas of gentlemanly expenditure. Poor fellow! He had so little of it to spend: and from delicacy he was afraid to say more on the subject of what he considered a trifle wholly unworthy of me. As he drew near his door, Ponsonby pressed me close to his heart. "My dear Harriette," said he, "it is indeed as you say, very hard upon us that we may not pass the whole of our lives together; but then be assured of this truth; and I hope that it may afford you consolation, happen what will, my affection for you, to whom I certainly owe some of the happiest hours I have ever known." The kiss which followed this declaration was as long and as ardent as our first! Yet alas! how different the parting kiss of unfathomable anguish, given in the fervour of gaunt despair, to the first soul-thrilling embrace of wild, ardent ecstasy, which comprehends no limits and which, like the last, could never be forgotten by me.