ly for her reply. I heard it
plainly enough.

'But I must leave this place, Frederick,' she said--'I never can be happy
here,--nor anywhere else, indeed,' she added, with a mirthless
laugh,--'but I cannot rest here.'

'But where could you find a better place?' replied he, 'so secluded--so
near me, if you think anything of that.'

'Yes,' interrupted she, 'it is all I could wish, if they could only have
left me alone.'

'But wherever you go, Helen, there will be the same sources of annoyance.
I cannot consent to lose you: I must go with you, or come to you; and
there are meddling fools elsewhere, as well as here.'

While thus conversing they had sauntered slowly past me, down the walk,
and I heard no more of their discourse; but I saw him put his arm round
her waist, while she lovingly rested her hand on his shoulder;--and then,
a tremulous darkness obscured my sight, my heart sickened and my head
burned like fire: I half rushed, half staggered from the spot, where
horror had kept me rooted, and leaped or tumbled over the wall--I hardly
know which--but I know that, afterwards, like a passionate child, I
dashed myself on the ground and lay there in a paroxysm of anger and
despair--how long, I cannot undertake to say; but it must have been a
considerable time; for when, having partially relieved myself by a
torment of tears, and looked up at the moon, shining so calmly and
carelessly on, as little influenced by my misery as I was by its peaceful
radiance, and earnestly prayed for death or forgetfulness, I had risen
and journeyed homewards--little regarding the way, but carried
instinctively by my feet to the door, I found it bolted against me, and
every one in bed except my mother, who hastened to answer my impatient
knocking, and received me with a shower of questions and rebukes.

'Oh, Gilbert! how could you do so? Where have you been? Do come in and
take your supper. I've got it all ready, though you don't deserve it,
for keeping me in such a fright, after the strange manner you left the
house this evening. Mr. Millward was quite-- Bless the boy! how ill he
looks. Oh, gracious! what is the matter?'

'Nothing, nothing--give me a candle.'

'But won't you take some supper?'

'No; I want to go to bed,' said I, taking a candle and lighting it at the
one she held in her hand.

'Oh, Gilbert, how you tremble!' exclaimed my anxious parent. 'How white
you look! Do tell me what it is? Has anything happened?'