d throw myself at your feet, and
say, 'Laura, will you come and share the contest with me?' Your sympathy
will cheer me while it lasts. I shall have one of the tenderest and most
generous creatures under heaven to aid and bear me company. Will you
take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy?"

"Do you think mamma would be happy if you were otherwise, Arthur?" Laura
said in a low sad voice.

"And why should I not be," asked Pen eagerly, "with so dear a creature
as you by my side? I have not my first love to give you. I am a broken
man. But indeed I would love you fondly and truly. I have lost many an
illusion and ambition, but I am not without hope still. Talents I know I
have, wretchedly as I have misapplied them: they may serve me yet: they
would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away and think that I am
pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, and hope, that you will
share my success if I gain it. You have given me so much, Laura dear,
will you take from me nothing?"

"What have you got to give, Arthur?" Laura said, with a grave sadness
of tone, which made Pen start, and see that his words had committed him.
Indeed, his declaration had not been such as he would have made it
two days earlier, when, full of hope and gratitude, he had run over to
Laura, his liberatress, to thank her for his recovered freedom. Had
he been permitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had
listened differently. It would have been a grateful heart asking for
hers; not a weary one offered to her, to take or to leave. Laura was
offended with the terms in which Pen offered himself to her. He had, in
fact, said that he had no love, and yet would take no denial. "I give
myself to you to please my mother," he had said: "take me, as she wishes
that I should make this sacrifice." The girl's spirit would brook a
husband under no such conditions: she was not minded to run forward
because Pen chose to hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply
to Arthur, showed her determination to be independent.

"No, Arthur," she said, "our marriage would not make mamma happy, as she
fancies; for it would not content you very long. I, too, have known
what her wishes were; for she is too open to conceal anything she has at
heart: and once, perhaps, I thought--but that is over now--that I could
have made you--that it might have been as she wished."

"You have seen somebody else," said Pen, angry at her tone, and
recalling the incide