d, you shrink back appalled,
to discover that you have lost none of the tendencies to love, but many
of the graces by which love is to be allured!"

There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words that they
went home at once to Legard's sympathies. He felt irresistibly impelled
to learn the worst.

"Maltravers," said he, in a hurried tone, "it would be an idle
compliment to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it
is indelicate in me to apply a general remark; and yet--yet I cannot
but fancy that I have discovered your secret, and that you are not
insensible to the charms of Miss Cameron!"

"Legard!" said Maltravers,--and so strong was his fervent attachment
to Evelyn, that it swept away all his natural coldness and reserve,--"I
tell you plainly and frankly that in my love for Evelyn Cameron lie the
last hopes I have in life. I have no thought, no ambition, no sentiment
that is not vowed to her. If my love should be unreturned, I may strive
to endure the blow, I may mix with the world, I may seem to occupy
myself in the aims of others; but my heart will be broken! Let us talk
of this no more; you have surprised my secret, though it must have
betrayed itself. Learn from me how preternaturally strong, how generally
fatal is love deferred to that day when--in the stern growth of all the
feelings--love writes itself on granite!"

Maltravers, as if impatient of his own weakness, put spurs to his horse,
and they rode on rapidly for some time without speaking.

That silence was employed by Legard in meditating over all he had heard
and witnessed, in recalling all that he owed to Maltravers; and before
that silence was broken the young man nobly resolved not even to
attempt, not even to hope, a rivalry with Maltravers; to forego all the
expectations he had so fondly nursed, to absent himself from the company
of Evelyn, to requite faithfully and firmly that act of generosity
to which he owed the preservation of his life,--the redemption of his
honour.

Agreeably to this determination, he abstained from visiting those haunts
in which Evelyn shone; and if accident brought them together, his
manner was embarrassed and abrupt. She wondered,--at last, perhaps she
resented,--it may be that she grieved; for certain it is that Maltravers
was right in thinking that her manner had lost the gayety that
distinguished it at Merton Rectory. But still it may be doubted whether
Evelyn had seen enough of Legard