Page:The Prairie Flower; Or, Adventures In the Far West.djvu/46

, Charles

you are not well you have bad news or something has happened which you have kept from me?"

"You love her, you say is not that enough? But go on! I will yield all to you. 1 will not stand in your way. No! sooner would I die than mar your happi ness. But I regret I did not know of it before."

"Charles," I exclaimed, in real alarm, "what mean you by these strange words? y'ou stand in my way? I do not under stand you; you have some hidden mean- ing!"

"Have you, then, not divined that I love her?"

"Ay."

"And can two love the same, and both be happy?"

"Why not? I would not rob you of your love. True, I love her deeply, de votedly, I swear to you; and I know you love her also; but then our love is different. You love her as a brother but I, as some thing more than brother."

"I see you are mistaken, Frank; and to show you how much I sacrifice to. your happiness, I will say, once for all, I love her as deeply, as devotedly, as passion ately as yourself; but not as a brother, my friend; no, not as a brother."

"Indeed* Charles!" I cried, with a ter rible suspicion of something I dared not ex press : " Indeed, Charles !'" and I grasped his arm, and sought his eye with mine : "Indeed, Huntly! No! no! gracious heavens! you cannot mean what you have said! Take it back, I beg of you, and avow you love her as a brother, and noth ing more for more would be criminal."

"I do not see the criminality you speak of," he answered coldly. "Is it not enough that I have offered to sacrifice my own happiness, without being charged with rime ?*"

"But Charles, my friend, consider! you have no right to an attachment warmer than a brother's."

"Rigfit!" echoed Huntly, turning pale with excitement : " Right, say you! By heavens! when it comes to that, I know not why my right to love her is not as rood as yours."

"Shall I tell you?"

"Ay, do! Quote me the law that makes

it criminal for me to love and not your self," answered Charles, bitterly.

"The law of consanguinity?"

"Heavens! what do you mean?"

"Does not the same blood flow in the veins of both of you?"

"Good God! you chill my blood with horror! you do not mean this?" and my friend turned deadly pale, reeled like on intoxicated, and grasped my aim for sup port. " I was not aware of this, Frank."

I now became more alarmed than ever. Something had assuredly turned the brain of my friend, and he was now, (how I shuddered as. I thought) he was now a maniac!

"Why, Charley," I said, in a tone as soothing as I could command, "surely you know her to be your sister!"

"Sister!" he fairly shrieked.

"Ay, sister, Charley. Is not Lilian your sister?"

"Lilian! " he cried, with a start, and a rapid change of countenance that terrified me. "Lilian! then you were speaking of my sister Lilian?"

"Assuredly! who else?"

Huntly looked at me a moment steadily, and then burst into an uncontrollable fit ol laughter, that made my blood run cold.

"Great Heaven!" I cried, " his senses are indeed lost!" and I was on the poinl of hurrying to camp, to give the alann and get assistance, when, seizing me by the arm with one hand, and giving me a hearty slap on the shoulder with the other, he exclaimed :

"Frank, if ever there were two fools, then you I and make four."

"Poor fellow!" I sighed, and my eyes filled with tears : " What a shock it will be to his family!"

"Why, Frank," he cried again, accom panying his words with another slap, "you are dreaming, man! your senses are wool gathering."

"Exactly," I said; "he, of course thinks me insane, poor fellow!"

"Nonsense, Frank. It is all a mistake, my dear fellow, and a laughable one truly, as you must know. You were speiking of sister Lilian; while I, all the time, was alluding to the fair unknown."

"What!" cried I, comprehending all at a glance; "then it is no insanity witt