know; I can't understand what it is that you have done
wrong. I'm sure I'm ready to forgive you."

She might have said more, but he took the breath from her lips, and held
her so close to his heart that she could feel its tumultuous beatings.

"But I can never forgive myself, darling."

"Oh, yes you will!"

The creature pursed up her lips and offered them for his kiss--thus, as
she thought, tempting him into self-forgiveness.

"Is it that you really--really love me?" questioned Hepworth, searching
the honest eyes she lifted to his with a glance half-passionate,
half-sorrowful, which brought a glow of blushes to her face.

"Can you ask that now?" she questioned, drooping her head. "Will a good
girl take kisses from the man she does not love?"

"God bless you for saying it, darling! Oh, if it could be--if it could
be!"

"If what could be, Mr. Closs?"

"That you might be my wife, live with me forever, love me forever."

"Your wife?" answered Clara, pondering over the sweet word in loving
tenderness. "Your wife? Are you asking me if I will be that?"

"I dare not ask you, Clara. What would your father say? What would he
have a right to say?"

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Clara, ruefully, for she could not
honestly say that her father would consent.

"You see, Clara, I have nothing to do but say farewell, and go."

CHAPTER II.

CLARA APPEALS TO HER STEPMOTHER.

Lady Hope had retreated into her own room, for the absence of her
husband was beginning to prey upon her; and she was all the more sad and
lonely because she knew in her heart that the two persons whom she saw
together in the moonlight were thinking, perhaps talking, of the love
which she must never know in its fullness again--which she had never
known as good and contented wives experience it.

Indeed, love is the one passion that can neither be wrested from fate or
bribed into life. It must spring up from the heart, like a wild flower
from seed God plants in virgin forest soil, to bring contentment with
its blossoming. The sunshine which falls upon it must be pure and
bright from heaven. Plant it in an atmosphere of sin, and that which
might have been a holy passion becomes a torment, bitter in proportion
to its strength.

Ah! how keenly Rachael Closs felt all this as she sat there alone in her
bower room, looking wistfully out upon those two lovers, both so dear to
her that her very soul yearned with sympathy for the innocent love