The play of roseate light on an autumnal sky at evening, is not more beautiful, than the changing tints that passed over Lucy’s beautiful face.  She did not speak, at first; but so intent, so inquiring was her look, while at the same time, it was so timid and modest, that I scarce needed the question that she finally succeeded in asking.

“What is it, you wish to say, Miles?” at length came from her in faltering tones.

“To ask to be permitted to keep these hands for ever.  Not one, Lucy; one will not satisfy a love like mine, a love that has got to be interwoven with my being, from having formed a part of my very existence from boyhood; yes, I ask for both.”

“You have them both, dear, dear Miles, and can keep them as long as you please.”

Even while this was in the course of utterance, the hands were snatched from me to be applied to their owner’s face, and the dear girl burst into a flood of tears.  I folded her in my arms, seated myself at her side on a sofa, and am not ashamed to say that we wept together.  I shall not reveal all that passed during the next quarter of an hour, nor am I quite certain that I could were I to make the attempt, but I well recollect my arm was around Lucy’s slender waist, at the end of that brief period.  What was said was not very coherent, nor do I know that anybody would care to hear, or read it.

“Why have you so long delayed to tell me this, Miles?” Lucy at length inquired, a little reproachfully.  “You who have had so many opportunities, and might have known how it would have been received!  How much misery and suffering it would have saved us both!”

“For that which it has caused you, dearest, I shall never forgive myself; but as for that I have endured, it is only too well merited.  But I thought you loved Drewett; everybody said you were to marry him; even your own father believed and told me as much—­”

“Poor, dear papa!—­He little knew my heart.  One thing, however, he did that would have prevented my ever marrying any one, Miles, so long as you lived.”

“Heaven for ever bless him for that, as well as for all his other good deeds?  What was it, Lucy?’

“When we heard of the supposed loss of your ship, he believed it, but I did not.  Why I did not believe what all around me thought was true, is more than I can explain, unless Providence humanely sustained me by hope.  But when my father thought you dead, in conversing of all your good qualities, Miles,—­and he loved you almost as well as his daughter”—­

“God bless him, dear old gentleman!—­but what did he tell you, Lucy?”

“You will never learn, if you thus interrupt me, Miles,” Lucy answered, smiling saucily in my face, though she permitted me still to hold both her hands, as if I had taken possession of them literally with an intent to keep them, blushing at the same time as much with happiness, I thought, as with the innate modesty of her nature.  “Have a little patience, and I will tell you.  When my father thought you dead, he told me the manner in which you had confessed to him the preference you felt for me; and do you, can you think, after I was thus put in possession of such a secret, I could listen to Andrew Drewett, or to any one else?”