hat every change of your manner
towards me made the joy or the misery of my life. This was when I was an
idle youth, lounging about in that condition of half dependence that,
as I look back on, I blush to think I ever could have endured. My only
excuse is, however, that I knew no better."

"There was nothing unbecoming in what you did."

"Yes, there was, though. There was this: I was satisfied to hold an
ambiguous position,--to be a something, neither master nor servant, in
another man's house, all because it gave me the daily happiness to be
near you, and to see you, and to hear your voice. That was unbecoming,
and the best proof of it was, that with all my love and all my devotion,
you could not care for me."

"Oh, Tony! do not say that."

"When I say care, you could not do more than care; you couldn't love
me."

"Were you not always as a dear brother to me?"

"I wanted to be more than brother, and when I found that this could not
be, I grew very careless, almost reckless, of my life; not but that it
took a long time to teach me the full lesson. I had to think over, not
only all that separated us in station, but all that estranged us in tone
of mind; and I saw that your superiority to me chafed me, and that if
you should ever come to feel for me, it would be through some sense of
pity."

"Oh, Tony!"

"Yes, Alice, you know it better than I can say it; and so I set my pride
to fight against my love, with no great success at first. But as I lay
wounded in the orchard at Melazzo, and thought of my poor mother, and
her sorrow if she were to hear of my death, and compared her grief with
what yours would be, I saw what was real in love, and what was mere
interest; and I remember I took out my two relics,--the dearest objects
I had in the world,--a lock of my mother's hair and a certain glove,--a
white glove you may have seen once on a time; and it was over the little
braid of brown hair I let fall the last tears I thought ever to shed in
life; and here is the glove--I give it back to you. Will you have it?"

She took it with a trembling hand; and in a voice of weak but steady
utterance said, "I told you that this time would come."

"You did so," said he, gloomily.

Alice rose and walked out upon the balcony; and after a moment Tony
followed her. They leaned on the balustrade side by side, but neither
spoke.

"But we shall always be dear friends, Tony, sha'n't we?" said she, while
she laid her hand gently over