ght, when you
were in the room with your relations, and they made you sing,--a song
too which you used to sing to me, and when you came to the second stanza
your voice failed you, and you burst into tears, and they, instead of
soothing, reproached and chid you, and you answered not, but wept on?
Isabel, do you remember that a sound was heard at the window and a
groan? Even they were startled, but they thought it was the wind, for
the night was dark and stormy, and they saw not that it was I: yes, my
devoted, my generous love, it was I who gazed upon you, and from whose
heart that voice of anguish was wrung; and I saw your cheek was pale and
thin, and that the canker at the core had preyed upon the blossom.

Think you, after this, that I could keep silence or obey your request?
No, dearest, no! Is not my happiness your object? I have the vanity
to believe so; and am I not the best judge how that happiness is to be
secured? I tell you, I say it calmly, coldly, dispassionately,--not
from the imagination, not even from the heart, but solely from the
reason,--that I can bear everything rather than the loss of you; and
that if the evil of my love scathe and destroy you, I shall consider
and curse myself as your murderer! Save me from this extreme of misery,
my--yes, my Isabel! I shall be at the copse where we have so often met
before, to-morrow, at noon. You will meet me; and if I cannot convince
you, I will not ask you to be persuaded. A. M.

And Isabel read this letter, and placed it at her heart, and felt less
miserable than she had done for months; for, though she wept, there
was sweetness in the tears which the assurance of his love and the
tenderness of his remonstrance had called forth. She met him: how could
she refuse? and the struggle was past. Though not "convinced" she was
"persuaded;" for her heart, which refused his reasonings, melted at his
reproaches and his grief. But she would not consent to unite her fate
with him at once, for the evils of that step to his interests
were immediate and near; she was only persuaded to permit their
correspondence and occasional meetings, in which, however imprudent they
might be for herself, the disadvantages to her lover were distant and
remote. It was of him only that she thought; for him she trembled; for
him she was the coward and the woman; for herself she had no fears, and
no forethought.

And Algernon was worthy of this devoted love, and returned it as it was
given.