and distinguish above all other men. May I for weighty reasons which fill me with distress, beg but a minute’s conversation with you here?’

Who that was inexperienced in deceit, and had a frank and youthful heart, could doubt the speaker’s truth—could doubt it too, when the voice that spoke, was like the faint echo of one she knew so well, and so much loved to hear? She inclined her head, and stopping, cast her eyes upon the ground.

‘A little more apart—among these trees. It is an old man’s hand, Miss Haredale; an honest one, believe me.’

She put hers in it as he said these words, and suffered him to lead her to a neighbouring seat.

‘You alarm me, sir,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You are not the bearer of any ill news, I hope?’

‘Of none that you anticipate,’ he answered, sitting down beside her. ‘Edward is well—quite well. It is of him I wish to speak, certainly; but I have no misfortune to communicate.’

She bowed her head again, and made as though she would have begged him to proceed; but said nothing.

‘I am sensible that I speak to you at a disadvantage, dear Miss Haredale. Believe me that I am not so forgetful of the feelings of my younger days as not to know that you are little disposed to view me with favour. You have heard me described as cold-hearted, calculating, selfish—’

‘I have never, sir,’—she interposed with an altered manner and a firmer voice; ‘I have never heard you spoken of in harsh or disrespectful terms. You do a great wrong to Edward’s nature if you believe him capable of any mean or base proceeding.’

‘Pardon me, my sweet young lady, but your uncle—’

‘Nor is it my uncle’s nature either,’ she replied, with a heightened colour in her cheek. ‘It is not his nature to stab in the dark, nor is it mine to love such deeds.’

She rose as she spoke, and would have left him; but he detained her with a gentle hand, and besought her in such persuasive accents to hear him but another minute, that she was easily prevailed upon to comply, and so sat down again.

‘And it is,’ said Mr Chester, looking upward, and apostrophising the air; ‘it is this frank, ingenuous, noble nature, Ned, that you can wound so lightly. Shame—shame upon you, boy!’

She turned towards him quickly, and with a scornful look and flashing eyes. There were tears in Mr Chester’s eyes, but he dashed them hurriedly away, as though unwilling that his weakness should be known, and regarded her with mingled admiration and compassion.

‘I never until now,’ he said, ‘believed, that the frivolous actions of a young man could move me like these of my own son. I never knew till now, the worth of a woman’s heart, which boys so lightly win, and lightly fling away. Trust me, dear young lady, that I never until now did know your worth; and though an abhorrence of deceit and falsehood has impelled me to seek you out, and would have done so had you been the poorest and least gifted of your sex, I should have lacked the fortitude to sustain this interview could I have pictured you to my imagination as you really are.’

Oh! If Mrs Varden could have seen the virtuous gentleman as he said these words, with indignation sparkling from his eyes—if she could have heard his broken, quavering voice—if she could have beheld him as he stood bareheaded in the sunlight, and with unwonted energy poured forth his eloquence!

With a haughty face, but pale and trembling too, Emma regarded him in silence. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed upon him as though she would look into his heart.