u are here increases your danger, and if my absence
should become known, there will be a search after me. I shall never forgive
myself if my folly should lead to your being captured.'

'If I could but feel my fate was linked with yours, I'd give my life for it
willingly.'

'It was not to listen to such words as these I came here.'

'Remember, dearest, they are the last confessions of one you shall never
see more. They are the last cry of a heart that will soon be still for
ever.'

'No, no, no!' cried she passionately. 'There is life enough left for you to
win a worthy name. Listen to me calmly now: I have heard from Curtis within
the last hour all his plans for your capture; I know where his patrols are
stationed, and the roads they are to watch.'

'And did you care to do this?' said he tenderly.

'I would do more than that to save you.'

'Oh, do not say so!' cried he wildly, 'or you will give me such a desire to
live as will make a coward of me.'

'Curtis suspects you will go northward; either he has had information, or
computes it from what you have done already.'

'He is wrong, then. When I go hence, it shall be to the court-house at
Tullamore, where I mean to give myself up.'

'As what?'

'As what I am--a rebel, convicted, sentenced, and escaped, and still a
rebel.'

'You do not, then, care for life?'

'Do I not, for such moments of life as this!' cried he, as, with a wild
rapture, he kissed her hand again and again.

'And were I to ask you, you would not try to save your life?'

'To share that life with you there is not anything I would not dare. To
live and know you were another's is more than I can face. Tell me, Nina, is
it true you are to be the wife of this soldier? I cannot utter his name.'

'I am to be married to Mr. Walpole.'

'What! to that contemptuous young man you have already told me so much of.
How have they brought you down to this?'

'There is no thought of bringing down; his rank and place are above my
own--he is by family and connection superior to us all.'

'And what is he, or how does he aspire to you? Is the vulgar security
of competence to live on--is that enough for one like you? is the
well-balanced good-breeding of common politeness enough to fill a heart
that should be fed on passionate devotion? You may link yourself to
mediocrity, but can you humble your nature to resemble it. Do you believe
you can plod on the dreary road of life without an impulse or an ambition,