you have but to demand."

"Do not--do not raise my hopes too high," cried Maltravers, with great
emotion; "I have been schooling myself all day. But if I _am_ deceived!"

"Trust me, you are not. See, even now she turns round to look for you;
she loves you,--loves you as you deserve. This difference of years that
you so lament does but deepen and elevate her attachment!"

Teresa turned to Maltravers, surprised at his silence. How joyous
sat his heart upon his looks,--no gloom on his brow, no doubt in
his sparkling eyes! He was mortal, and he yielded to the delight of
believing himself beloved. He pressed Teresa's hand in silence, and,
quitting her abruptly, gained the side of Evelyn. Madame de Montaigne
comprehended all that passed within him; and as she followed, she soon
contrived to detach her children, and returned with them to the house on
a whispered pretence of seeing if their father had yet arrived. Evelyn
and Maltravers continued to walk on,--not aware, at first, that the rest
of the party were not close behind.

The sun had set; and they were in a part of the grounds which, by way
of contrast to the rest, was laid out in the English fashion; the
walk wound, serpent-like, among a profusion of evergreens irregularly
planted; the scene was shut in and bounded, except where at a distance,
through an opening of the trees, you caught the spire of a distant
church, over which glimmered, faint and fair, the smile of the evening
star.

"This reminds me of home," said Evelyn, gently.

"And hereafter it will remind me of you," said Maltravers, in whispered
accents. He fixed his eyes on her as he spoke. Never had his look been
so true to his heart; never had his voice so undisguisedly expressed the
profound and passionate sentiment which had sprung up within him,--to
constitute, as he then believed, the latest bliss, or the crowning
misery, of his life! At that moment, it was a sort of instinct that told
him they were _alone_; for who has not felt--in those few and memorable
hours of life when love long suppressed overflows the fountain, and
seems to pervade the whole frame and the whole spirit--that there is
a magic around and within us that hath a keener intelligence than
intellect itself? Alone at such an hour with the one we love, the whole
world besides seems to vanish, and our feet to have entered the soil,
and our lips to have caught the air, of Fairyland.

They were alone. And why did Evelyn tremble? Why d