you could not deny me!'

'This is almost beyond endurance--Heaven support us,' he groaned. 'Emmy,
you are the Duchess of Hamptonshire, the Duke of Hamptonshire's wife; you
must not go with me!'

'And am I then refused?--Oh, am I refused?' she cried frantically.
'Alwyn, Alwyn, do you say it indeed to me?'

'Yes, I do, dear, tender heart! I do most sadly say it. You must not
go. Forgive me, for there is no alternative but refusal. Though I die,
though you die, we must not fly together. It is forbidden in God's law.
Good-bye, for always and ever!'

He tore himself away, hastened from the shrubbery, and vanished among the
trees.

Three days after this meeting and farewell, Alwyn, his soft, handsome
features stamped with a haggard hardness that ten years of ordinary wear
and tear in the world could scarcely have produced, sailed from Plymouth
on a drizzling morning, in the passenger-ship _Western Glory_. When the
land had faded behind him he mechanically endeavoured to school himself
into a stoical frame of mind. His attempt, backed up by the strong moral
staying power that had enabled him to resist the passionate temptation to
which Emmeline, in her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was
rewarded by a certain kind of success, though the murmuring stretch of
waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to be articulating
to him in tones of her well-remembered voice.

He framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to mild
proportions the feverish regrets which would occasionally arise and
agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he
not hearkened to the whispers of conscience. He fixed his thoughts for
so many hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had
brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes' thought of
Emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing
epicure proportioning the rank drinks that cause his malady. The voyage
was marked by the usual incidents of a sailing-passage in those days--a
storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a funeral--the latter sad
event being one in which he, as the only clergyman on board, officiated,
reading the service ordained for the purpose. The ship duly arrived at
Boston early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to
Providence to seek out a distant relative.

After a short stay at Providence he returned again to Boston, and by
applying himself to a s