fear that I shall have a friend. Is
that it?"

"I suggested nothing of that kind; I fear my lovely Clara may die." He
smiled derisively.

"Am I then such a monster that I am feared? Really, Miss Minot, your
picture of me is rather different from anything I have before known."

"I ought to have known you would not understand me. It would have been
equal folly for me to try to explain Clara's nature to you, for you do
not and cannot appreciate it."

"We are getting into deep water," he interrupted, but I continued:

"I have never called you a monster and have treated you as well as I
knew how to. You were my brother's friend, I have not doubted your
esteem for Clara, for how can any see her without loving and respecting
her; that is not the point. Your feelings, she has told you, she cannot
reciprocate; why can you not respect her feelings, even at the sacrifice
of your own? If you would do this, Mr. Benton, you would be stronger."

"Miss Minot, you are braver than I imagined. Let me disarm your fear; I
have no intention of intruding myself where I am not desired. How you
came in possession of these interesting facts is a mystery (insinuating,
I felt, that I had been eavesdropping). Nevertheless I admit them all,
and I admire you greatly. You are, however, as impulsive as a changeful
sea, and you made little preparation for this conversation. Allow me to
suggest that in affairs of the heart you should be a little less stormy.
I am your friend, and I say this in kindness."

"I thank you, sir; you have lived longer than I have, and I know by the
expression in your eye to-day that you can, if you choose, govern all
the love in your nature at the will of your intellect; I cannot, and I
never want to; I like to be impulsive, I like to be true, I hate
policy." As I spoke, my eyes were, I know, like dark fires.

He looked like a man of marble as he said, "Your fears are ungrounded;
you might have spared yourself this trouble," and turning, left me.

"There, 'Emily did it,' and didn't do it all," I said to myself. "Now he
will be more determined than ever, Clara will die, Louis will hate me,
and I shall be bereft doubly. Oh! dear, dear! Emily mistakes--my name
should be." Then the tears came and I sat with my face buried in my
hands, and cried like a child. A hand touched me, an arm crept round
me, "Hal," I said, starting.

"No," said Wilmur Benton in his sweeter tone, "It is I."

"Oh!" I screamed almost, making an a