e exclaimed:

"You don't mean me, Hugh! Oh, you don't mean me?"

"Yes, darling," and he clasped in his own the hand raised imploringly
toward him. "Yes, darling, I mean you. Will you be my wife?"

Alice had never before heard a voice so earnest, so full of meaning, as
the one now pleading with her to be what she could not be. She must do
something, and sliding from her stool she sank upon her knees--her
proper attitude--upon her knees before Hugh, whom she had wronged so
terribly, and burying her face in Hugh's own hands, she sobbed:

"Oh, Hugh, Hugh! you don't know what you ask. I love you dearly, but
only as my brother--believe me, Hugh, only as a brother. I wanted one so
much--one of my own, I mean; but God denied that wish, and gave me you
instead. I'm sorry I ever came here, but I cannot go away. I've learned
to love my Kentucky home. Let me stay just the same. Let me really be
what I thought I was, your sister. You will not send me away?"

She looked up at him now, but quickly turned away, for the expression of
his white, haggard face was more than she could bear, and she knew there
was a pang, keener even than any she had felt, a pang which must be
terrible, to crush a strong man as Hugh was crushed.

"Forgive me, Hugh," she said, as he did not speak, but sat gazing at her
in a kind of stunned bewilderment. "You would not have me for your wife,
if I did not love you?"

"Never, Alice, never!" he answered. "But it is not any easier to bear. I
don't know why I asked you, why I dared hope that you could think of me.
I might have known you could not. Nobody does. I cannot win their love.
I don't know how."

Alice neither looked up nor moved, only sobbed piteously, and this more
than aught else helped Hugh to choke down his own sorrow for the sake of
comforting her. The sight of her distress moved him greatly, for he knew
it was grief that she had so cruelly misled him.

"Alice, darling," he said again, this time as a mother would soothe her
child. "Alice, darling, it hurts me more to see you thus than your
refusal did. I am not wholly selfish in my love. I'd rather you should
be happy than to be happy myself. I would not for the world take to my
bosom an unwilling wife. I should be jealous even of my own caresses,
jealous lest the very act disgusted her more and more. You did not mean
to deceive me. It was I that deceived myself. I forgive you fully, and
ask you to forget that to-night has ever been. It cut m