e. Never was wooing more strangely circumstanced
than this,--the one lover pleading while the other was in view; the one,
ardent, impassioned, the other, calm and passive; and the silence of the
last, alas! having all the success which the words of the other lacked.
It might be said that the choice before Sibyll was a type of the choice
ever given, but in vain, to the child of genius. Here a secure and
peaceful life, an honoured home, a tranquil lot, free from ideal
visions, it is true, but free also from the doubt and the terror, the
storms of passion; there, the fatal influence of an affection, born of
imagination, sinister, equivocal, ominous, but irresistible. And the
child of genius fulfilled her destiny!

"Master Alwyn," said Sibyll, rousing herself to the necessary exertion,
"I shall never cease gratefully to recall thy generous friendship, never
cease to pray fervently for thy weal below. But forever and forever let
this content thee,--I can no more."

Impressed by the grave and solemn tone of Sibyll, Alwyn hushed the groan
that struggled to his lips, and gloomily replied: "I obey you, fair
mistress, and I return to my workday life; but ere I go, I pray you
misthink me not if I say this much: not alone for the bliss of hoping
for a day in which I might call thee mine have I thus importuned, but,
not less--I swear not less--from the soul's desire to save thee from
what I fear will but lead to woe and wayment, to peril and pain, to
weary days and sleepless nights. 'Better a little fire that warms than
a great that burns.' Dost thou think that Lord Hastings, the vain, the
dissolute--"

"Cease, sir!" said Sibyll, proudly; "me reprove if thou wilt, but lower
not my esteem for thee by slander against another!"

"What!" said Alwyn, bitterly; "doth even one word of counsel chafe thee?
I tell thee that if thou dreamest that Lord Hastings loves Sibyll Warner
as man loves the maiden he would wed, thou deceivest thyself to thine
own misery. If thou wouldst prove it, go to him now,--go and say, 'Wilt
thou give me that home of peace and honour, that shelter for my father's
old age under a son's roof which the trader I despise proffers me in
vain?"

"If it were already proffered me--by him?" said Sibyll, in a low voice,
and blushing deeply.

Alwyn started. "Then I wronged him; and--and--" he added generously,
though with a faint sickness at his heart, "I can yet be happy in
thinking thou art so. Farewell, maiden, the sa