d
stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the
counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you
offer it."

He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so.
Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell:
he could command his countenance thoroughly.

"I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you," he said: "I think
I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn."

I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien.

"Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have
been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on
which our natures are at variance--a topic we should never discuss: the
very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were
required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin,
abandon your scheme of marriage--forget it."

"No," said he; "it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which can
secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present.
To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom
I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight--take that
space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject
it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a
noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my
wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and
barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with
those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!"

He had done. Turning from me, he once more

"Looked to river, looked to hill."

But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy
to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in
his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere
and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected
submission--the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has
detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to
sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into
obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with
my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.

That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget
even to sh