You will not wish now to own
your sister!" said Emily, with a sad smile.

"Yes, were you ten times a slave, it would not obliterate the mark of
the omniscient God! It could not alter the beauty of the features or the
character. I should be proud of such a sister, even did she wear the
shackles. But you! No, no, there is no stain upon your birth!"

"And can you regard me as you once did? A--"

"An angel. Yes, truly, as an angel of the higher order."

"Nay, nay, this sounds not like the Henry Carroll of a month since. You
are a flatterer," said Emily, with a smile.

"I did but say what I would have gladly said then," replied Henry.

The fear of ingratitude to a father no longer chained his heart to the
narrow limit of friendship. He saw her before him trodden down by
misfortune, in the power of subtlety and villany, and as a child of
misfortune his heart even more strongly inclined to her. He loved her
more tenderly than before.

"Then, when sorrow was a stranger, you were subdued and distant to your
sister," said Emily, her heart fluttering with the storm of emotion
within it.

"I am as I was then; but you were a child of affluence, and I feared
to--to--"

"Why did you fear?" asked Emily, not waiting to hear the word Henry was
stammering to enunciate. "Had you no confidence in your sister?"

"I did have confidence in the _sister_. But I fear it was not a sister's
confidence I sought."

"Indeed!" said Emily, her emotions destroying the appearance of surprise
the word was intended to convey.

"Emily, I will not now attempt to conceal the feelings which have torn
my heart," said Henry, in a low tone, as he took her willing hand. "When
I bade you farewell,--alas! what misfortunes have come since!--when I
left you for I dared not think how long, you know not what violence I
did to the warmest feeling of my heart. You know not what misery the
struggle between that feeling and duty has caused me. I have striven to
conquer it; but Heaven has now put you in my path, thus bidding me
resist no more the impulse of my heart. I love you, Emily, and I have
tried, for your sake and your father's, to conquer my love. Say, Emily,
may I venture to hope my love is not unvalued?"

A slight pressure of the hand he held was all the answer he
received--was, indeed, all he asked.

"You forget what I am," murmured Emily.

"I will always forget what this will has said you are. But Heaven will
not let the innocent be wronged, no