id she feel that a
crisis of existence was at hand?

"Miss Cameron--Evelyn," said Maltravers, after they had walked some
moments in silence, "hear me--and let your reason as well as your heart
reply. From the first moment we met, you became dear to me. Yes, even
when a child, your sweetness and your fortitude foretold so well
what you would be in womanhood; even then you left upon my memory a
delightful and mysterious shadow,--too prophetic of the light that now
hallows and wraps your image! We met again,--and the attraction that
had drawn me towards you years before was suddenly renewed. I love you,
Evelyn! I love you better than all words can tell! Your future fate,
your welfare, your happiness, contain and embody all the hopes left
to me in life! But our years are different, Evelyn; I have known
sorrows,--and the disappointments and the experience that have severed
me from the common world have robbed me of more than time itself hath
done. They have robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our
race,--which may it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain! To me, the
time foretold by the Preacher as the lot of age has already arrived,
when the sun and the moon are darkened, and when, save in you and
through you, I have no pleasure in anything. Judge, if such a being you
can love! Judge, if my very confession does not revolt and chill, if it
does not present to you a gloomy and cheerless future, were it possible
that you could unite your lot to mine! Answer not from friendship or
from pity; the love I feel for you can have a reply from love alone, and
from that reasoning which love, in its enduring power, in its healthful
confidence, in its prophetic foresight, alone supplies! I can resign you
without a murmur; but I could not live with you and even fancy that you
had one care I could not soothe, though you might have happiness I
could not share. And fate does not present to me any vision so dark and
terrible--no, not your loss itself; no, not your indifference; no, not
your aversion--as your discovery, after time should make regret in vain,
that you had mistaken fancy or friendship for affection, a sentiment for
love. Evelyn, I have confided to you all,--all this wild heart, now and
evermore your own. My destiny is with you."

Evelyn was silent; he took her hand, and her tears fell warm and fast
upon it. Alarmed and anxious, he drew her towards him and gazed upon her
face.

"You fear to wound me," he said,