adow will linger still round you, my child, and condemn you
to wretchedness; I cannot, cannot bear that thought!" and he struck his
clenched hand against his brow. "Why on the innocent should fall the
chastisement of the guilty? My child, my child, oh, banish from your
unsuspecting heart the hopes of love returned. Where in this selfish
world will you find one to love you so for yourself alone, that family
and fortune are as naught?"

"Why judge so harshly of your sex, Mr. Grahame?" said a rich and
thrilling voice, in unexpected answer to his words, and the same young
man whom we before mentioned as lingering by a village grave, stepping
lightly from the terrace on which the large window opened into the room,
stood suddenly before the astonished father and his child. On the latter
the effect of his presence was almost electric. The rich crimson mantled
at once over cheek and brow and neck, a faint cry burst from her lips,
and as the thought flashed across her, that her perhaps too presumptuous
hopes of love returned had been overheard, as well as her father's
words, she suddenly burst into tears of mingled feeling, and darting by
the intruder, passed by the way he had entered into the garden; but even
when away from him, composure for a time returned not. She forgot
entirely that no name had been spoken either by her father or by herself
to designate him whom she confessed she loved; her only feeling was,
she had betrayed a truth, which from him she would ever have concealed,
till he indeed had sought it; and injured modesty now gave her so much
pain, it permitted her not to rejoice in this unexpected appearance of
one whom she had not seen since she had believed him dead. She knew the
churchyard was at this period of the evening quite deserted, and almost
unconscious what she was about, she hastily tied on her bonnet, and with
the speed of a young fawn, she bounded through the narrow lane, and
rested not till she found herself seated beside her favourite grave;
there she gave full vent to the thoughts in which pleasure and confusion
somewhat strangely and painfully mingled.

"Can you, will you forgive this unceremonious and, I fear, unwished-for
intrusion?" was the young stranger's address to Grahame, when he had
recovered from the agitation which Lilla's emotion had called forth, he
scarcely knew wherefore. "To me you have ever extended the hand of
friendship, Mr. Grahame, however severe upon the world in general, and