rle
did not dare to think of the gladness that might yet be his.

"No, no," cried Phebe, looking up into his face furrowed with deep
lines; "it is impossible! You ought not to ask me."

"Why?" he said.

She did not move or take away her eyes from his face. A rush of sad
memories and associations was sweeping across her troubled heart. She
saw him as he had been long ago, so far above her that it had seemed an
honor to her to do him the meanest service. She thought of Felicita in
her unapproachable loveliness and stateliness; and of their home, so
full to her of exquisite refinement and luxury. In the true humility of
her nature she had looked up to them as far above her, dwelling on a
height to which she made no claim. And this dethroned king of her early
days was a king yet, though he stood before her as Jean Merle, still
fast bound in the chains his sins had riveted about him.

"I am utterly unworthy of you," he said; "but let me justify myself if I
can. I had no thought of asking you such a question when I came up
here. But you spoke mournfully of your loneliness; and I, too, am
lonely, with no human being on whom I have any claim. It is so by my own
sin. But you, at least, have friends; and in a year or two, when my last
friend, Mr. Clifford, dies, you will go out to them, to my children,
whom I have forfeited and lost forever. There is no tie to bind me
closely to my kind. I am older than you--poorer; a dishonor to my
father's house! Yet for an instant I fancied you might learn to love me,
and no one but you can ever know me for what I am; only your faithful
heart possesses my secret. Forgive me, Phebe, and forget it if you can."

"I never can forget it," she answered, with a low sob.

"Then I have done you a wrong," he went on; "for we were friends, were
we not? And you will never again be at home with me as you have hitherto
been. I was no more worthy of your friendship than of your love, and I
have lost both."

"No, no," she cried, in a broken voice. "I never thought--it seems
impossible. But, oh! I love you. I have never loved any one like you.
Only it seems impossible that you should wish me to be your wife."

"Cannot you see what you will be to me," he said passionately. "It will
be like reaching home after a weary exile; like finding a fountain of
living waters after crossing a burning wilderness. I ought not to ask it
of you, Phebe. But what man could doom himself to endless thirst and
exile! If yo