Agnes stood up, she received his offered hand, and raised her eyes to his face, but uttered no word either of surprise or joy. Her face was colourless, and traces of very recent tears were plainly visible; she trembled from head to foot, and Colonel Hubert, frightened, as a brave man always is when he sees a woman really sinking under her sex's weakness, replaced her on the sofa almost as incapable of speaking as herself. "Do not appear distressed at seeing me, dearest Miss Willoughby," said he, "or I shall be obliged to repent having ventured to wait on you. I should not have presumed to do this, had not your friends, your truly attached friends, my aunt and sister, authorized my doing so." "Oh! what kindness!" exclaimed poor Agnes, bursting into a flood of most salutary tears. "Do not think me ungrateful, Colonel Hubert, if I could not say ... if I did not speak to you.... Do you, indeed, come to me from Lady Elizabeth?" "Here are my credentials," he replied, smiling, and presenting a letter to her. "We learned that your foolish aunt ... forgive me, Miss Willoughby; but the step I have taken can only be excused by explaining it with the most frank sincerity ... we learned that Mrs. Barnaby, having quitted Cheltenham suddenly, (the ostensible reason for doing which was bad enough), had left a variety of debts unpaid; and that her creditors, alarmed at her not returning, were taking active measures to secure her person.... Is this true?... Is your aunt arrested?" "She is," replied Agnes faintly. "Good God!... You are here, then, entirely alone?" "I am quite alone," was the answer, though it was almost lost in the sob that accompanied it. "Oh! dearest Agnes!" cried Colonel Hubert, in a burst of uncontrolable emotion, "I cannot see you thus, and longer retain the secret that has been hidden in my heart almost from the first hour I saw you!... I love you, Agnes, beyond all else on earth!... Consent to be my wife, and danger and desertion shall never come near you more!" What a moment was this to hear such an avowal!... Human life can scarcely offer extremes more strongly marked of weal and woe than those presented by the actual position of Agnes, and that proposed to her by the man she idolized. But let De la Rochefoucault say what he will, there are natures capable of feeling something nobler than the love of self; ... and after one moment of happy triumphant swelling of the heart that left no breath to speak, she heaved a long deep sigh that seemed to bring her back from her momentary glimpse of an earthly paradise to things as they are, and said slowly, but with great distinctness, "No! never will I be your wife!... never, by my consent, shall Colonel Hubert ally himself to disgrace!"