Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... great bright eyes, as he stood by her side looking sadly down on her. "Lady Janet knows all!" she repeated, with her head on her breast, and the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. Have you told her?" "I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first." "Has Lady Janet said any thing to you?" "Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she has listened to you with the quick hearing of love--and she has found her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me--she will not speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul, has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has found its youth again, through You. At her age--at any age--is such a tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circumstances? No! She will suffer any thing, risk any thing, forgive any thing, rather than own, even to herself, that she has been deceived in you. There is more than her happiness at stake; there is pride, a noble pride, in such love as hers, which will ignore the plainest discovery and deny the most unanswerable truth. I am firmly convinced--from my own knowledge of her character, and from what I have observed in her to-day--that she will find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession. And more than that, I believe (if the exertion of her...