ut you would
make it the type and concentration of all that lowers and
debases!--suspicion--cavil--fear--selfishness in all its shapes!
Out on you--love!"

"Enough, enough! Say no more, Madeline, say no more. We part not as
I had hoped; but be it so. You are changed indeed, if your conscience
smite you not hereafter for this injustice. Farewell, and may you never
regret, not only the heart you have rejected, but the friendship you
have belied." With these words, and choked by his emotions, Walter
hastily strode away.

He hurried into the house, and into a little room adjoining the chamber
in which he slept, and which had been also appropriated solely to his
use. It was now spread with boxes and trunks, some half packed, some
corded, and inscribed with the address to which they were to be sent in
London. All these mute tokens of his approaching departure struck upon
his excited feelings with a suddenness that overpowered him.

"And it is thus--thus," said he aloud, "that I am to leave, for the
first time, my childhood's home."

He threw himself on his chair, and covering his face with his hands,
burst, fairly subdued and unmanned, into a paroxysm of tears.

When this emotion was over, he felt as if his love for Madeline had
also disappeared; a sore and insulted feeling was all that her image now
recalled to him. This idea gave him some consolation. "Thank God!" he
muttered, "thank God, I am cured at last!"

The thanksgiving was scarcely over, before the door opened softly, and
Ellinor, not perceiving him where he sat, entered the room, and laid
on the table a purse which she had long promised to knit him, and which
seemed now designed as a parting gift.

She sighed heavily as she laid it down, and he observed that her eyes
seemed red as with weeping.

He did not move, and Ellinor left the room without discovering him; but
he remained there till dark, musing on her apparition, and before he
went down-stairs, he took up the little purse, kissed it, and put it
carefully into his bosom.

He sate next to Ellinor at supper that evening, and though he did not
say much, his last words were more to her than words had ever been
before. When he took leave of her for the night, he whispered, as he
kissed her cheek; "God bless you, dearest Ellinor, and till I return,
take care of yourself, for the sake of one, who loves you now, better
than any thing on earth."

Lester had just left the room to write some letters for Wal