will soon be something closer between us. You will love
her, and she, I know, will love you as a sister, and as the preserver of
one so very humble as myself. It was a night of danger when you first
heard her name, and saw her features; and when you and she will converse
over that night and its events, I feel satisfied that it will bring you
both only the closer to one another."

"We will not talk of it farther, Mr. Colleton--I would not willingly
hear of it again. It is enough that you are now free from all such
danger--enough that all things promise well for the future. Let not any
thought of past evil, or of risk successfully encountered, obscure the
prospect--let no thought of me produce an emotion, hostile, even for a
moment, to your peace."

"And why should you think, my sweet girl, and with an air of such
profound sorrow, that such a thought must be productive of such an
emotion. Why should the circumstances so happily terminating, though
perilous at first, necessarily bring sorrow with remembrance. Surely you
are now but exhibiting the sometimes coy perversity which is ascribed to
your sex. You are now, in a moment of calm, but assuming those winning
playfulnesses of a sex, conscious of charm and power, which, in a time
of danger, your more masculine thought had rejected as unbecoming. You
forget, Lucy, that I have you in charge--that you are now my
sister--that my promise to your departed uncle, not less than my own
desire to that effect, makes me your guardian for the future--and that I
am now come, hopeful of success, to take you with me to my own country,
and to bring you acquainted with her--(I must keep no secret from you,
who are my sister)--who has my heart--who--but you are sick, Lucy. What
means this emotion?"

"Nothing, nothing, Mr. Colleton. A momentary weakness from my late
indisposition--it will soon be over. Indeed, I am already well. Go on,
sir--go on!"

"Lucy, why these titles? Why such formality? Speak to me as if I were
the new friend, at least, if you will not behold in me an old one. I
have received too much good service from you to permit of this
constraint. Call me Ralph--or Colleton--or--or--nay, look not so
coldly--why not call me your brother?"

"Brother--brother be it then, Ralph Colleton--brother--brother. God
knows, I need a brother now!" and the ice of her manner was thawed
quickly by his appeal, in which her accurate sense, sufficiently
unclouded usually by her feelings, tho