Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/434

418 at it, made her start from her chair. A few moments, and the summons was repeated, so she softly opened the window.

"It is James Ailsa," whispered her heart. And her surmise was correct: James Ailsa stood there. He came close underneath the window, and asked her to come down to him for a few moments.

"What a request, James!"

"It is the last I shall have to make you," he said. "I am going away for ever."

"You are joking."

"The last few days have been no joke for me," he answered, "or such as to incline me for joking. I repeat to you, Emily, that I am going; and it may be that this is our last meeting en earth."

She left the window, and, stealing down the stairs, ran out at a back door, and so round the house till she came in sight of James. He drew her underneath some trees, where they were shaded from observation, and partially so from the pouring rain.

"James," she said, "I am doing very wrong in thus coming down to yon, because you know our intimacy is at an end."

"I do know it," he replied, bitterly, "and it is not for the purpose of clandestinely inducing you to renew it, or to act contrary to the wish of your parents, that I am here."

Emily, arrant flirt that she was, felt rather disappointed, for she had fancied Mr. James's nocturnal visit had that tendency, and would have experienced much gratification in refusing the boon, or, to speak more correctly, in being asked it.

"Hear me," began Ailsa. "I have loved you, Emily, with no common love: few have loved another in tins world as I love you. If you possess the same affection for me, any fate will be more tolerable to you than hopeless separation; and the very thought of marrying another must be hateful to you. Now listen. I would not fetter yon by word or deed; but if your heart will whisper one hope to me, I shall go forth a different man; life will be as bright to me as all is now dark."

"I do not understand you," replied Emily. "We are separated, therefore what hope can I give you?"

"The hope that when my efforts have been crowned with success; when I shall have acquired fame, fortune, that even you might be proud to share, I may return and woo you.

"It is so long to look forward to!" was her answer, delivered in a grumbling tone.

"That is sufficient," returned Ailsa, sadly: "it has convinced me of what I feared;" and, had the light permitted, Emily might have seen the despair that flew to his countenance; but she could not have seen it, in all its bitter sickness, as it then and there seated itself upon his heart. "Had you put the question to me," he continued, "and required me to wait until our hairs were grown grey, and our stops feeble, I should have knelt and blessed you. Did you love as I love, this request of mine would have made a heaven of your days: it would have held forth a hope to cheer the whole of existence."

"But what would papa say? He "

"I think you do not quite understand me," interrupted Ailsa, in the same tone of sadness, which indeed characterised his conversation