doubtful as to
his ultimate success.

"Dear Fanny!" he said, "for both our sakes, pray try to be collected:
all my future happiness is at this moment at stake. I did not bring
you here to listen to what I have told you, without having become too
painfully sure that your hand, your heart, your love, are necessary
to my happiness. All my hopes are now at stake; but I would not, if I
could, secure my own happiness at the expense of yours. Pray believe
me, Fanny, when I say that I love you completely, unalterably,
devotedly: it is necessary now for my own sake that I should say as
much as that. Having told you so much of my own heart, let me hear what
you wish to tell me of yours. Oh, that I might have the most distant
gleam of hope, that it would ever return the love which fills my own!"

"It cannot, Adolphus--it never can," said she, still trying to hide
her tears. "Oh, why should this bitter misery have been added!" She
then rose quickly from her seat, wiped her eyes, and, pushing back her
hair, continued, "I will no longer continue to live such a life as I
have done--miserable to myself, and the cause of misery to others.
Adolphus,--I love Lord Ballindine. I love him with, I believe, as true
and devoted a love as woman ever felt for a man. I valued, appreciated,
gloried in your friendship; but I can never return your, love. My heart
is wholly, utterly, given away; and I would not for worlds receive it
back, till I learn from his own mouth that he has ceased to love me."

"Oh, Fanny! my poor Fanny!" said Kilcullen; "if such is the case, you
are really to be pitied. If this be true, your condition is nearly as
unhappy as my own."

"I am unhappy, very unhappy in your love," said Fanny, drawing herself
up proudly; "but not unhappy in my own. My misery is that I should be
the cause of trouble and unhappiness to others. I have nothing to
regret in my own choice."

"You are harsh, Fanny. It may be well that you should be decided, but
it cannot become you also to be unfeeling. I have offered to you all
that a man can offer; my name, my fortune, my life, my heart; though
you may refuse me, you have no right to be offended with me."

"Oh, Adolphus!" said she, now in her turn offering him her hand: "pray
forgive me: pray do not be angry. Heaven knows I feel no offence: and
how strongly, how sincerely, I feel the compliment you have offered me.
But I want you to see how vain it would be in me to leave you--leave
you in any