d really think you loved him."

"Of course I do! I love and honour him more than any one I ever
met--except my dear father."

"Come, Aura, you are talking by rote out of the marriage service. You
may be open with me, you know, it will go no further; and I do long to
know whether you can be truly content at heart," said Harriet with real
affection.

"Dear sister," said Aurelia, touched, "believe me that indeed I am. Mr.
Belamour is kindness itself. He is all he ever promised to be to me, and
sometimes more."

"Yet if he loved you, he could never let you live moped up there. Are
you never frighted at the dark chamber? I should die of it!"

"The dark does not fright me," said Aurelia.

"You have a courage I have not! Come, now, were you never frighted to
talk with a voice in the dark?"

"Scarcely ever!" said aurelia.

"Scarcely--when was that?"

"You will laugh, Harriet, but it is when he is most--most tender and
full of warmth. Then I hardly know him for the same."

"What! If he be not always tender to my poor dear child, he must be a
wretch indeed."

"O no, no, Harriet! How shall I ever make you understand?" cried
Aurelia. "Never for a moment is he other than kind and gentle. It
is generally like a father, only more courtly and deferential, but
sometimes something seems to come over him, and he is--oh! I cannot tell
you--what I should think a lover would be," faltered Aurelia, colouring
crimson, and hiding her face on her sister's shoulder, as old habits of
confidence, and need of counsel and sympathy were obliterating all the
warnings of last night.

"You silly little chit! Why don't you encourage these advances? You
ought to be charmed, not frightened."

"They would ch---I should like it if it were not so like two men in one,
the one holding the other back."

Harriet laughed at this fancy, and Aurelia was impelled to defend it.
"Indeed, Harriet, it is really so. There will be whispers--oh, such
whispers!"--she sunk her voice and hid her face again--"close to my ear,
and--endearments--while the grave voice sounds at the other end of the
room, and then I long for light. I swooned for fright the first time,
but I am much more used to it now."

"This is serious," said Harriet, with unwonted gravity. "Do you really
think that there is another person in the room?"

"I do not feel as if it could be otherwise, and yet it is quite
impossible."

"I would not bear it," said her sister. "You ought not to bea