Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/118

116 "I was wrong," cried he; "to me you have always been kind and enduring: but forgive me, I am not well, and am grown sadly irritable." "For one word, one look of yours," continued she, "you know well I would give up every thing else in the world. Oh! that you would let me stay beside you, to watch you, to nurse you: but this is folly—" for her quick eye caught the coldness on her companion's face; "I know you do not love me, that you never could love me now. Well, I have chosen my own path; but oh, Walter! there are times when, in the silence of the night, I sit at my window and see the stars shining down so coldly and so sadly, that my thoughts go back upon other years, and a sort of dream comes over me of a far different happiness; I see you, Walter, when but a boy, with your soft, serious eyes, sitting at the feet of my old grandmother, and reading aloud to her: I have not profited much by those words—" and the girl paused, pale and tearful; but, before Maynard had time to answer, she had started up: "but I