s coming
about her again; 'while I speak to you very seriously, Mr Wrayburn?'

'I will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie,'
he answered with pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms. 'See here!
Napoleon Buonaparte at St Helena.'

'When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last,'
said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplication
which troubled his better nature, 'you told me that you were much
surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing excursion.
Was it true?'

'It was not,' replied Eugene composedly, 'in the least true. I came
here, because I had information that I should find you here.'

'Can you imagine why I left London, Mr Wrayburn?'

'I am afraid, Lizzie,' he openly answered, 'that you left London to get
rid of me. It is not flattering to my self-love, but I am afraid you
did.'

'I did.'

'How could you be so cruel?'

'O Mr Wrayburn,' she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, 'is the
cruelty on my side! O Mr Wrayburn, Mr Wrayburn, is there no cruelty in
your being here to-night!'

'In the name of all that's good--and that is not conjuring you in my
own name, for Heaven knows I am not good'--said Eugene, 'don't be
distressed!'

'What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference between
us? What else can I be, when to tell me why you came here, is to put me
to shame!' said Lizzie, covering her face.

He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and
pity. It was not strong enough to impell him to sacrifice himself and
spare her, but it was a strong emotion.

'Lizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who
could affect me so much by saying so little. But don't be hard in your
construction of me. You don't know what my state of mind towards you is.
You don't know how you haunt me and bewilder me. You don't know how the
cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other
turning of my life, WON'T help me here. You have struck it dead, I
think, and I sometimes almost wish you had struck me dead along with
it.'

She had not been prepared for such passionate expressions, and they
awakened some natural sparks of feminine pride and joy in her breast. To
consider, wrong as he was, that he could care so much for her, and that
she had the power to move him so!

'It grieves you to see me distressed, Mr Wrayburn; it grieves me to see
you distressed. I do