The easiest thing to do was to comply; she sat down accordingly, and he placed himself beside her. Then a sudden conviction came over her that something was to follow; and with a sort of desperate hope of stopping him, of avoiding a renewal of what was so painful, she began to talk of other things, the season, the harvest, the people, any thing for a subject. He listened in silence; his eyes were fixed on the open doorway; he might have been counting the drops which fell from the eaves, so steadily did he gaze that way. Her ideas, unsupported by any help from him, necessarily came to an end; and when she paused, it was his turn to speak. “Hilary, tell me, once more let me speak; has my changeless devotion no influence on you?” She shook her head. “None! yet of late you have seemed to encourage me; you have accepted――at least you have not repelled――my attentions; you have allowed me to distinguish you as my first object; you have permitted those advances from my family which were intended to show how they would welcome you as one of themselves; you have graced my _fête_ with your presence; your name has already been whispered round the neighborhood as the object, as the recipient of my vows: has not all this given me a right to hope; does all this go for nothing, for unmeaning form with you?” “I do not understand your language, Mr. Huyton,” replied Hilary, in great suprise; “your tone and manner are alike new and unpleasant. May I ask you to drop this subject while we are compelled to remain together here!” “You would ask in vain; my happiness, my welfare in life, every hope here and hereafter is bound up in the thoughts of you, in the wish to make you my wife!” She tried to stop him as he spoke, but her gentle interruption was quite unheeded as he poured out his vehement declarations. “Why have you refused to see me, shut yourself up, and banished me from your house? What makes you, one so tender, loving, gentle as you, what makes you so hard, so unpersuadable to me? What have I done that you will not love me? What is there in me, about me, belonging to me, that makes me disagreeable? And why this coquetry; at one time readily listening, calmly permitting, if not encouraging, my devotion, then denying me all interest, all concern; repulsing me entirely? Is this fair! just! right! Hilary! Do you think those who witnessed your peril, and your rescue, in my park, doubted the motives which nerved my arm and warmed my heart? Do you think their plaudits were valued for any thing besides the worth they might give me in your eyes? And, Hilary, is my reward to be ever the no! no! no! which dooms me to misery, despair, and heartless solitude?” Mr. Huyton rose as he spoke, and stood before her in magnificent desperation. She looked at him amazed; he was strangely altered. He was no longer the humble suppliant; he seemed to think he had earned a right other, that she was his in equity.