'No!' exclaimed he, warmly, and touched to the soul; 'nothing is impossible that you wish to effect! Hear me, then, trust and speak to me as a friend; a faithful, a cordial, a disinterested friend! Confide to me your name--your situation--the motives to your concealment--the causes that can induce such mystery of appearance, in one whose mind is so evidently the seat of the clearest purity:--the reasons of such disguise--' 'Disguise, I acknowledge, Sir, you may charge me with; but not deceit! I give no false colouring. I am only not open.' 'That, that is what first struck me as a mark of a distinguished character! That noble superiority to all petty artifices, even for your immediate safety; that undoubting innocence, that framed no precautions against evil constructions; that innate dignity, which supported without a murmur such difficulties, such trials;--' 'Ah, Mr Harleigh! a friend and a flatterer--are they, then, synonimous terms? If, indeed, you would persuade me you feel that they are distinct, you will not make me begin a new and distasteful career--since to begin it I think indispensable;--with the additional chagrin of appearing to be wanting in punctuality. No further opposition, I beg!' 'O yet one word, one fearful word must be uttered--and one fatal--or blest reply must be granted!--The excess of my suspense, upon the most essential of all points, must be terminated! I will wait with inviolable patience the explanation of all others. Tell me, then, to what barbarous cause I must attribute this invincible, this unrelenting reserve?--How I may bear an abrupt answer I know not, but the horrour of uncertainty I experience, and can endure no longer. Is it, then, to the force of circumstances I may impute it?--or ... is it....' 'Mr Harleigh,' interrupted Ellis, with strong emotion, 'there is no medium, in a situation such as mine, between unlimited confidence, or unbroken taciturnity: my confidence I cannot give you; it is out of my power--ask me, then, nothing!' 'One word,--one little word,--and I will torment you no longer: is it to pre-engagement--' Her face was averted, and her hand again was placed upon the lock of the door. 'Speak, I implore you, speak!--Is that heart, which I paint to myself the seat of every virtue ... is it already gone?--given, dedicated to another?' He now trembled himself, and durst not resist her effort to open the door, as she replied, 'I have no heart!--I must have none?' She uttered this in a tone of gaiety, that would utterly have confounded his dearest expectations, had not a glance, with difficulty caught, shewed him a tear starting into her eye; while a blush of fire, that defied constraint, dyed her cheeks; and kept no pace with the easy freedom from emotion, that her voice and manner seemed to indicate. Flushed with tumultuous sensations of conflicting hopes and fears, he now tenderly said, 'You are determined then, to go?' 'I am; but you must first leave my room.'