Take care. -If you do not speak- I shall claim you as my own in some presumptuous way. -Send me away at once, if I must go; -Margaret!-

Margaret had always dreaded lest her courage should fail her in any emergency, and she should be proved to be, what she dreaded lest she was--a coward. But now, in this real great time of reasonable fear and nearness of terror, she forgot herself, and felt only an intense sympathy--intense to painfulness--in the interests of the moment.

Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.

He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.

He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her--while he was jealous of her--while he renounced her--he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.

Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from his meaning.

A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.