d you ever tell me your teacher was your lover,--he with whom you
were so intimately associated when I first knew you? You suffered me to
believe that he was to you in the relation almost of a father. I
received him as such in my own home. I lavished upon him every
hospitable attention, as the friend and guide of your youth, and now you
suffer me to hear from others that his romantic love was the theme of
village gossip, that your names are still associated by idle tongues."

"I always believed before that unrequited love was not a theme for vain
boasting, that it was a secret too sacred to be divulged even to the
dearest and the nearest."

"But every one who has been so unfortunate as to be associated with you,
seems to have been the victims of unrequited love. The name of Richard
Clyde is familiar to all as the model of despairing lovers, and even Dr.
Harlowe addresses you in a strain of unpardonable levity."

"O Ernest, cannot you spare even him?"

"You asked me the cause of my displeasure, and I have told you the
source of my grief, otherwise I had been silent. There must be something
wrong, Gabriella, or you would not be the subject of such remarks.
Edith, all lovely as she is, passes on without exciting them. The most
distant allusion to a lover should be considered an insult by a wedded
woman and most especially in her husband's presence."

"I have never sought admiration or love," said I, every feeling of
delicacy and pride rising to repel an insinuation so unjust. "When they
have been mine, they were spontaneous gifts, offered nobly, and if not
accepted, at least declined with gratitude and sensibility. If I have
been so unfortunate as to win what your lovely sister might more justly
claim, it has been by the exercise of no base allurement or meritricious
attractions. I appeal to your own experience, and if it does not acquit
me, I am for ever silent."

Coldly and proudly my eye met his, as we stood face to face in the light
of the midnight moon. I, who had looked up to him with the reverence due
to a superior being, felt that I was above him now. He was the slave of
an unjust passion, the dupe of a distempered fancy, and as such unworthy
of my respect and love. As I admitted this truth, I shuddered with that
vague horror we feel in dreams, when we recoil from the brink of
something, we know not what. I trembled when his lips opened, fearful he
would say something more irrational and unmanly still.

"O E