any
one."

"Mine eyes--mine own eyes--were my informant," said Morley. "This morn,
the very morn I arrived in London, I learnt how your matins were now
spent. Yes!" he added in a tone of mournful anguish, "I passed the gate
of the gardens; I witnessed your adieus."

"We met by hazard," said Sybil, in a calm tone, and with an expression
that denoted she was thinking of other things, "and in all probability
we shall never meet again. Talk not of these trifles. Stephen; my
father, how can we save him?"

"Are they trifles?" said Morley, slowly and earnestly, walking to her
side, and looking her intently in the face. "Are they indeed trifles,
Sybil? Oh! make me credit that, and then--" he paused.

Sybil returned his gaze: the deep lustre of her dark orb rested on
his peering vision; his eye fled from the unequal contest: his heart
throbbed, his limbs trembled; he fell upon his knee.

"Pardon me, pardon me," he said, and he took her hand. "Pardon the most
miserable and the most devoted of men!"

"What need of pardon, dear Stephen?" said Sybil in a soothing tone. "In
the agitated hour wild words escape. If I have used them, I regret; if
you, I have forgotten."

The clock of St John's told that the sixth hour was more than half-past.

"Ah!" said Sybil, withdrawing her hand, "you told me how precious was
time. What can we do?"

Morley rose from his kneeling position, and again paced the chamber,
lost for some moments in deep meditation. Suddenly he seized her arm,
and said, "I can endure no longer the anguish of my life: I love you,
and if you will not be mine, I care for no one's fate."

"I am not born for love," said Sybil, frightened, yet endeavouring to
conceal her alarm.

"We are all born for love," said Morley. "It is the principle of
existence, and its only end. And love of you, Sybil," he continued, in
a tone of impassioned pathos, "has been to me for years the hoarded
treasure of my life. For this I have haunted your hearth and hovered
round your home; for this I have served your father like a slave, and
embarked in a cause with which I have little sympathy, and which can
meet with no success. It is your image that has stimulated my ambition,
developed my powers, sustained me in the hour of humiliation, and
secured me that material prosperity which I can now command. Oh! deign
to share it; share it with the impassioned heart and the devoted life
that now bow before you; and do not shrink from them, becaus