your father--_our_ father--will you await us here?"

"I have something to say to you--sit down and hear me," said Mary, in a
voice which she strove in vain to raise above a whisper.

He placed himself beside her on the sofa, still clasping the hand he had
taken, and with a voice faltering and low at first, but gathering
strength as she proceeded, Mary resumed:--"I will not attempt--I do not
wish to deny that you have read my heart aright--that--that you who
saved me are--are--" a lover's ear alone could detect the next
words--"very dear to me--but I cannot--I think I ought not----"

She paused, and Captain Percy said, "You are not willing to intrust your
happiness to one so lately known."

"Oh, no! you mistake my meaning--I can have no doubt of you--no fear for
my own happiness--but my father--who will care for him if I, his
daughter, his only child, thus give myself to another at the very time
that he needs me most?"

"I will not take you from him--at least not now, Mary--give me but the
right to call you mine, and I will leave you here in your own sweet
home--not again, I trust, to be visited by war--till peace shall leave
me at liberty to return to England with my bride--my wife."

He would have clasped her to him as he named her thus, but Mary
struggled almost wildly to free herself, exclaiming, "Oh! plead not thus
lest I forget my father in myself--my duty in love--the forgetfulness
would be but short--I should be unhappy even at your side, when I
thought of the loneliness of heart and life to which I had condemned
him."

"But he should go with us--he should have our home. It will be a simple
home, Mary--for though I come of a lordly race, I inherit not their
wealth--but it will be large enough for our father."

"Kind and generous!" exclaimed Mary, as she suffered her fingers to
clasp the hand in which they had hitherto only rested, "would that it
might be so--but that were to ask of my father a sacrifice greater even
than the surrender of his daughter--the sacrifice of his sense of duty
to the people who have chosen him as their spiritual father--and to whom
he considers himself bound for life."

Captain Percy remained silent long after she had ceased to speak, with
his eyes resting on her downcast face. At length in low, sad tones, he
questioned, "And must we part thus?"

Mary's lips moved, but she could not speak.

"I will not ask you to remember me, Mary," he resumed, "for if
forgetfulness be possi