ust have it out at once,
like an aching tooth. "I love, with all my heart and soul, that girl in
Sark; the one who has been my patient there."

"Martin!" she cried, in a tone full of surprise and agitation--"Martin!"

"Yes; I know all you would urge--my honor; my affection for Julia; the
claims she has upon me, the strongest claims possible; how good and
worthy she is; what an impossibility it is even to look back now. I know
it all, and feel how miserably binding it is upon me. Yet I love Olivia;
and I shall never love Julia."

"Martin!" she cried again.

"Listen to me, Johanna," I said, for now the ice was broken, my frozen
words were flowing as rapidly as a runnel of water; "I used to dream of
a feeling something like this years ago, but no girl I saw could kindle
it into reality. I have always esteemed Julia, and when my youth was
over, and I had never felt any devouring passion, I began to think love
was more of a word than a fact, or to believe that it had become only a
word in these cold late times. At any rate, I concluded I was past the
age for falling in love. There was my cousin Julia certainly dearer to
me than any other woman, except my mother. I knew all her little ways;
and they were not annoying to me, or were so in a very small degree.
Besides, my father had had a grand passion for my mother, and what had
that come to? There would be no such white ashes of a spent fire for
Julia to shiver over. That was how I argued the matter out with myself.
At eight-and-twenty I had never lost a quarter of an hour's sleep, or
missed a meal, for the sake of any girl. Surely I was safe. It was quite
fair for me to propose to Julia, and she would be satisfied with the
affection I could offer her. Then there was my mother; it was the
greatest happiness I could give her, and her life has not been a happy
one, God knows. So I proposed to Julia, and she accepted me last
Christmas."

"And you are to be married next month?" said Johanna, in an exceedingly
troubled tone.

"Yes," I answered, "and now every word Julia speaks, and every thing she
does, grates upon me. I love her as much as ever as my cousin, but as my
wife! Good Heavens! Johanna, I cannot tell you how I dread it."

"What can be done?" she exclaimed, looking from me to Captain Carey,
whose face was as full of dismay as her own. But he only shook his head
despondingly.

"Done!" I repeated, "nothing, absolutely nothing. It is utterly
impossible to draw bac