, smiling sadly at my manifest
discomposure; 'there is little chance of my forgetting you. But I did
not mean that Frederick should be the means of transmitting messages
between us--only that each might know, through him, of the other's
welfare;--and more than this ought not to be: for you are young, Gilbert,
and you ought to marry--and will some time, though you may think it
impossible now: and though I hardly can say I wish you to forget me, I
know it is right that you should, both for your own happiness, and that
of your future wife;--and therefore I must and will wish it,' she added
resolutely.

'And you are young too, Helen,' I boldly replied; 'and when that
profligate scoundrel has run through his career, you will give your hand
to me--I'll wait till then.'

But she would not leave me this support. Independently of the moral evil
of basing our hopes upon the death of another, who, if unfit for this
world, was at least no less so for the next, and whose amelioration would
thus become our bane and his greatest transgression our greatest
benefit,--she maintained it to be madness: many men of Mr. Huntingdon's
habits had lived to a ripe though miserable old age. 'And if I,' said
she, 'am young in years, I am old in sorrow; but even if trouble should
fail to kill me before vice destroys him, think, if he reached but fifty
years or so, would you wait twenty or fifteen--in vague uncertainty and
suspense--through all the prime of youth and manhood--and marry at last a
woman faded and worn as I shall be--without ever having seen me from this
day to that?--You would not,' she continued, interrupting my earnest
protestations of unfailing constancy,--'or if you would, you should not.
Trust me, Gilbert; in this matter I know better than you. You think me
cold and stony-hearted, and you may, but--'

'I don't, Helen.'

'Well, never mind: you might if you would: but I have not spent my
solitude in utter idleness, and I am not speaking now from the impulse of
the moment, as you do. I have thought of all these matters again and
again; I have argued these questions with myself, and pondered well our
past, and present, and future career; and, believe me, I have come to the
right conclusion at last. Trust my words rather than your own feelings
now, and in a few years you will see that I was right--though at present
I hardly can see it myself,' she murmured with a sigh as she rested her
head on her hand. 'And don't argue agai