r
Rose, I know it all.'

'I am not here by accident,' he added after a lengthened silence; 'nor
have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday--only
yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?'

'Stay,' said Rose. 'You _do_ know all.'

'All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
subject of our last discourse.'

'I did.'

'Not to press you to alter your determination,' pursued the young man,
'but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of
station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still
adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or
act, to seek to change it.'

'The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,'
said Rose firmly. 'If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her,
whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when
should I ever feel it, as I should to-night? It is a struggle,' said
Rose, 'but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall
bear.'

'The disclosure of to-night,'--Harry began.

'The disclosure of to-night,' replied Rose softly, 'leaves me in the
same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.'

'You harden your heart against me, Rose,' urged her lover.

'Oh Harry, Harry,' said the young lady, bursting into tears; 'I wish I
could, and spare myself this pain.'

'Then why inflict it on yourself?' said Harry, taking her hand. 'Think,
dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.'

'And what have I heard! What have I heard!' cried Rose. 'That a sense
of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned
all--there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.'

'Not yet, not yet,' said the young man, detaining her as she rose. 'My
hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought in life except my
love for you: have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no
distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice
and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught
but real disgrace and shame; but a home--a heart and home--yes, dearest
Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.'

'What do you mean!' she faltered.

'I mean but this--that when I left you last, I left you with a firm
determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me;
resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine;
that no