of your going away
than of poor Charles.'

'Yes,' he said, 'you have understood me as none but you would have done,
through coldness and reserve, apparently, even towards yourself, and
when to others I have seemed grave and severe beyond my years. You have
never doubted, you have recognized the warmth within; you have trusted
your happiness to me, and it shall be safe in my keeping, for, Laura, it
is all mine.'

'There is only one thing,' said Laura, timidly; 'would it not be better
if mamma knew?'

'Laura, I have considered that, but remember you are not bound; I have
never asked you to bind yourself. You might marry to-morrow, and I
should have no right to complain. There is nothing to prevent you.'

She exclaimed, as if with pain.

'True,' he answered; 'you could not, and that certainty suffices me. I
ask no more without your parents' consent; but it would be giving them
and you useless distress and perplexity to ask it now. They would object
to my poverty, and we should gain nothing; for I would never be so
selfish as to wish to expose you to such a life as that of the wife of a
poor officer; and an open engagement could not add to our confidence
in each other. We must be content to wait for my promotion. By that
time'--he smiled gravely--'our attachment will have lasted so many years
as to give it a claim to respect.'

'It is no new thing.'

'No newer than our lives; but remember, my Laura, that you are but
twenty.'

'You have made me feel much older,' sighed Laura, 'not that I would be a
thoughtless child again. That cannot last long, not even for poor little
Amy'

'No one would wish to part with the deeper feelings of elder years
to regain the carelessness of childhood, even to be exempted from the
suffering that has brought them.'

'No, indeed.'

'For instance, these two years have scarcely been a time of great
happiness to you.'

'Sometimes,' whispered Laura, 'sometimes beyond all words, but often
dreary and oppressive.'

'Heaven knows how unwillingly I have rendered it so. Rather than dim the
brightness of your life, I would have repressed my own sentiments for
ever.'

'But, then, where would have been my brightness?'

'I would, I say, but for a peril to you. I see my fears were unfounded.
You were safe; but in my desire to guard you from what has come on poor
Amy, my feelings, though not wont to overpower me, carried me further
than I intended.'

'Did they?'

'Do not suppose I regret