ds comfort so much--is it for
me to add to his misfortunes? Rise!" she added more firmly; "if you
retain this unbecoming posture any longer, I will leave the room and you
shall never see me more."

The commanding tone of Alice overawed the impetuosity of her lover, who
took in silence a seat removed to some distance from hers, and was again
about to speak. "Julian," said she in a milder tone, "you have spoken
enough, and more than enough. Would you had left me in the pleasing
dream in which I could have listened to you for ever! but the hour of
wakening is arrived." Peveril waited the prosecution of her speech as a
criminal while he waits his doom; for he was sufficiently sensible that
an answer, delivered not certainly without emotion, but with firmness
and resolution, was not to be interrupted. "We have done wrong," she
repeated, "very wrong; and if we now separate for ever, the pain we may
feel will be but a just penalty for our error. We should never have met:
meeting, we should part as soon as possible. Our farther intercourse
can but double our pain at parting. Farewell, Julian; and forget we ever
have seen each other!"

"Forget!" said Julian; "never, never. To _you_, it is easy to speak the
word--to think the thought. To _me_, an approach to either can only be
by utter destruction. Why should you doubt that the feud of our
fathers, like so many of which we have heard, might be appeased by our
friendship? You are my only friend. I am the only one whom Heaven has
assigned to you. Why should we separate for the fault of others, which
befell when we were but children?"

"You speak in vain, Julian," said Alice; "I pity you--perhaps I pity
myself--indeed, I should pity myself, perhaps, the most of the two; for
you will go forth to new scenes and new faces, and will soon forget
me; but, I, remaining in this solitude, how shall _I_ forget?--that,
however, is not now the question--I can bear my lot, and it commands us
to part."

"Hear me yet a moment," said Peveril; "this evil is not, cannot be
remediless. I will go to my father,--I will use the intercession of my
mother, to whom he can refuse nothing--I will gain their consent--they
have no other child--and they must consent, or lose him for ever. Say,
Alice, if I come to you with my parents' consent to my suit, will you
again say, with that tone so touching and so sad, yet so incredibly
determined--Julian, we must part?" Alice was silent. "Cruel girl, will
you not