misfortunes which
have befallen you, it has come back to me again with a power I
have not had the strength to resist -- along with my sympathy
for those misfortunes. Dear Miss Haye, I hope for your
forgiveness and noble interpretation, when I say that I have
dared to confess this to you from the impulse of the very
circumstances which make it seem most daring."

"The misfortunes you allude to, are but one," said Elizabeth.

"One -- yes, -- but not one in the consequences it involved."

"At that rate of reckoning," said Elizabeth, "there would be
to such a thing as _one_ misfortune in the world."

"I was not thinking of one," said Rufus quietly. "The actual
loss you have suffered is one shared by many -- pardon me, it
does not always imply equal deprivation, nor the same need of
a strong and helping friendly hand."

Elizabeth answered with as much quietness, --

"It is probably good for me that I have care on my hands -- it
would be a weak wish, however natural, to wish that I could
throw off on some agent the charge of my affairs."

"The charge I should better like," said Rufus looking at her,
-- "the only charge I should care for, -- would be the charge of
their mistress."

An involuntary quick movement of Elizabeth put several feet
between them; then after half a minute, with a flushed face
and somewhat excited breathing, she said, not knowing
precisely what she said,

"I would rather give you the charge of my property, sir. The
other is, you don't very well know what."

"My brother would be the better person to perform the first
duty, probably," Rufus returned, with a little of his old-
fashioned haughtiness of style.

Elizabeth's lips parted and her eye flashed, but as she was
not looking at him, it only flashed into the water. Both stood
proudly silent and still. Elizabeth was the first to speak,
and her tone was gentle, whatever the words might be.

"You cannot have your wish in this matter, Mr. Landholm, and
it would be no blessing to you if you could. I trust it will
be no great grief to you that you cannot."

"My grief is my own," said Rufus with a mixture of
expressions. "How should that be no blessing to me, which it
is the greatest desire of my life to obtain, Miss Haye?"

"I don't think it is," said Elizabeth. "At least it will not
be. You will find that it is not. It is not the desire of
mine, Mr. Landholm."

There was silence again, a mortified silence on one part, --
for a little s