, and while I retain
their memory I can never--"

"Hush--hush, Lucy! you will drive me mad. Is my happiness of less value
in your eyes than the few paltry dollars my mother expended for you?"

"Shall I, serpent-like, sting the hand that has fed me? No! no! would I
had never heard those words. We were so happy--you will be happy
again--but I--leave me, I pray you, for we must part now and for
ever--oh! leave me."

"No, Lucy, we will never part--I will never leave you."

He would again have drawn her to his side, but at his touch, Lucy roused
herself, and with a wild, half-frenzied effort, breaking from him, she
rushed rapidly, blindly forward. He would have followed her, but
stumbling against the root of a tree, before he could recover himself
she was at the outskirts of the wood, in sight of the farm-house, and
though he might overtake he could not detain her. He returned home, not
overwhelmed with disappointment, but with joy throbbing at his heart,
and hope beaming in his eyes. Lucy loved him--of that he felt
assured--and bucklered by that assurance he could stand against the
world. Life was before him--a life not of sickly pleasures and _ennui_
breeding indolence--but a life of contest and struggle and labor,
perhaps even of exhausting labor, yet a life which should awaken and
discipline his powers: a life of victory and of repose--sweet because
won with effort--a life to which Lucy's love should give its crowning
joy. Such are youth's dreams. In his case these dreams were somewhat
rudely dispelled by a summons from his mother's physician. Lady Houstoun
was ill--very ill--he must not delay, said the physician; and he did
not; yet a hastily pencilled line told that even at this moment Lucy was
not forgotten--it was a farewell which breathed love and faith and
hope.

On Edward Houstoun's arrival in New-York, he found his mother already
recovering from the acute attack which had endangered her life and
occasioned his recall. He soon unfolded to her his new views of life,
and the career which he had marked out for himself. New views
indeed--new and incomprehensible to Lady Houstoun! She saw not that the
life of indulgence, the perpetual gala-day, which she anticipated for
her son, would have condemned him to see his highest powers dwindle away
and die in the lethargy of inaction, or to waste in repinings against
fate those energies given to command success. Time moderated her
astonishment, and quiet perseverance su