me like
that! I promise it with all my heart."

I ventured a little nearer to her, and held out my hand.

"You have many friends who love you, Miss Fairlie. Your happy future
is the dear object of many hopes. May I say, at parting, that it is
the dear object of MY hopes too?"

The tears flowed fast down her cheeks. She rested one trembling hand
on the table to steady herself while she gave me the other. I took it
in mine--I held it fast. My head drooped over it, my tears fell on it,
my lips pressed it--not in love; oh, not in love, at that last moment,
but in the agony and the self-abandonment of despair.

"For God's sake, leave me!" she said faintly.

The confession of her heart's secret burst from her in those pleading
words. I had no right to hear them, no right to answer them--they were
the words that banished me, in the name of her sacred weakness, from
the room. It was all over. I dropped her hand, I said no more. The
blinding tears shut her out from my eyes, and I dashed them away to
look at her for the last time. One look as she sank into a chair, as
her arms fell on the table, as her fair head dropped on them wearily.
One farewell look, and the door had closed upon her--the great gulf of
separation had opened between us--the image of Laura Fairlie was a
memory of the past already.

The End of Hartright's Narrative.

THE STORY CONTINUED BY VINCENT GILMORE

(of Chancery Lane, Solicitor)

I

I write these lines at the request of my friend, Mr. Walter Hartright.
They are intended to convey a description of certain events which
seriously affected Miss Fairlie's interests, and which took place after
the period of Mr. Hartright's departure from Limmeridge House.

There is no need for me to say whether my own opinion does or does not
sanction the disclosure of the remarkable family story, of which my
narrative forms an important component part. Mr. Hartright has taken
that responsibility on himself, and circumstances yet to be related
will show that he has amply earned the right to do so, if he chooses to
exercise it. The plan he has adopted for presenting the story to
others, in the most truthful and most vivid manner, requires that it
should be told, at each successive stage in the march of events, by the
persons who were directly concerned in those events at the time of
their occurrence. My appearance here, as narrator, is the necessary
consequence of this arrangement. I was