on the eve of explanation. So she looked up into George's
face, and said quietly--

"No, George, I never was engaged to my cousin. He proposed to me, but I
refused him, explicitly and in most unmistakable terms."

"You did?" panted George, his heart throbbing tumultuously. "When was
that?"

"On the evening of the day when you last arrived in Portsmouth harbour
in the _Industry_."

Then, all in a moment, a suspicion of the truth dawned upon George.

"And it was on that same evening that I met him out there, close to the
church, and he confided to me, as a great secret, the circumstance that
you had just accepted him."

"You were so near as that, and yet you never called? For shame,
George!" exclaimed Lucy.

"Well, you see--I--that is--in fact I could not. The--the plain truth
is that I--I was on my way to you at the time, to try my own fortune
with you, and when I was told that you had accepted your cousin, I--
well, I felt that I couldn't meet you just then," stammered George with
desperate energy.

"Poor George!" murmured Lucy. "How well my cousin understood your
unsuspicious character! He _knew_ it would never occur to you to doubt
his word, and he told you that tale to keep you away from--from--"

"From what? from whom?" asked George. "Oh Lucy! is it possible that, if
I had carried out my original resolution that night, you would have
accepted me?"

"Yes, George, I would indeed," was the murmured reply. "I have loved
you, and you only, for a long time. But not longer than you have loved
me," she added roguishly, as George took her in his arms and--

But, avast there! whither are we running? It is high time that we
should 'bout ship and haul off on the opposite tack, if we would not be
regarded as impertinent intruders. Love-making is a most delightful
pastime, particularly when it comes in at the end of a long period of
suffering, hardship, and misunderstanding; but it loses all its piquant
charm if it has to be performed in the presence of strangers, no matter
how sympathetic. So we will leave it to the lively imagination of the
intelligent reader to picture for him, or herself, according to his, or
her, particular fancy, the way in which the remainder of the evening was
spent, merely mentioning that the lovers found time to come to a
thoroughly and mutually satisfactory understanding, and that, when
George left Sea View that evening, he was--to make use of a somewhat
hackneyed expression