Louis gladly retired, to add, as a postscript to his letter, what he had found so much difficulty in preventing himself from making its primary subject. The ladies had already withdrawn; and Ferdinand seeing their waiving gowns through the distant shrubbery in the garden, believed that without any breach of his resolution, he might once more cool his feverish pulse with the breeze at their side; and for the last time sooth his disturbed soul by feeling himself near Alice, and listening to her tender accents. The wish was no sooner formed than he was in their path. Mrs. Coningsby was not there. Cornelia was calmly gathering flowers to replenish her beau-pots, and Alice was walking pensively towards the wicket that opened to the hill. Ferdinand followed her, and with a bound of joy he could not conceal from his better reason, saw her open the little gate and pass through. A few sheep were cropping the grass on the pasture, and her favorite lamb frolicked before her. She did not notice it, but turned to the base of the hill. Ferdinand heard her draw a deep sigh, as she seemed to think herself removed from observation, and, in an agitated voice, she ejaculated his name. He required no more to be at her side,--at her feet. What he said he hardly knew, but he felt all his high resolves vanish, and that words failed under the impetuous declaration of his heart. Surprized at so unthought-of a disclosure; and alarmed at a language and vehemence she had never known before, Alice would have fled; but he detained her with her hands clasped in his: and while he wept upon them in the wild emotions of his soul, her tears flowed also; and he wrought her to confess that she had retired alone, to weep at his departure. Ferdinand forgot all the wretched past, in the transport of that moment; and amidst the burning blushes of a timidity that trembled at every word she uttered, he drew from the guileless Alice all the secret of her heart. His dominant passion had again seized the rein; and clasping her hands to his breast, he ardently implored her to pledge him her faith before the Supreme of Heaven,--That, however long might be his absence, she would never be persuaded to become the wife of any other man. Then growing in his demands on the tender girl, he conjured her to promise not to continue that "exquisite softness of manner, to Mr. de Montemar, the sight of which had already more than half maddened him."--With a glance, which shone like a shooting star over the dewy night, she gave him the solemn pledge he asked; and she smiled, when she made a promise she deemed so unnecessary. But both engagements were hardly pronounced by her ingenuous lips, before his ungovernable selfishness smote upon the conscience of her lover.