t on an autumnal sky at evening, is not more
beautiful, than the changing tints that passed over Lucy's beautiful face.
She did not speak, at first; but so intent, so inquiring was her look,
while at the same time, it was so timid and modest, that I scarce needed
the question that she finally succeeded in asking.

"What _is_ it, you wish to say, Miles?" at length came from her in
faltering tones.

"To ask to be permitted to keep these hands for ever. Not one, Lucy; one
will not satisfy a love like mine, a love that has got to be interwoven
with my being, from having formed a part of my very existence from
boyhood; yes, I ask for _both_."

"You have them both, dear, _dear_ Miles, and can keep them as long as you
please."

Even while this was in the course of utterance, the hands were snatched
from me to be applied to their owner's face, and the dear girl burst into
a flood of tears. I folded her in my arms, seated myself at her side on a
sofa, and am not ashamed to say that we wept together. I shall not reveal
all that passed during the next quarter of an hour, nor am I quite certain
that I could were I to make the attempt, but I well recollect my arm was
around Lucy's slender waist, at the end of that brief period. What was
said was not very coherent, nor do I know that anybody would care to hear,
or read it.

"Why have you so long delayed to tell me this, Miles?" Lucy at length
inquired, a little reproachfully. "You who have had so many opportunities,
and might have known how it would have been received! How much misery and
suffering it would have saved us both!"

"For that which it has caused _you_, dearest, I shall never forgive
myself; but as for that _I_ have endured, it is only too well merited. But
I thought you loved Drewett; everybody said you were to marry him; even
your own father believed and told me as much--"

"Poor, dear papa!--He little knew my heart. One thing, however, he did
that would have prevented my ever marrying any one, Miles, so long as
you lived."

"Heaven for ever bless him for that, as well as for all his other good
deeds? What was it, Lucy?'

"When we heard of the supposed loss of your ship, he believed it, but I
did not. Why I did not believe what all around me thought was true, is
more than I can explain, unless Providence humanely sustained me by hope.
But when my father thought you dead, in conversing of all your good
qualities, Miles,--and he loved you almost as well as his