“And so he may, my child, and yet break his own heart and yours, poor guileless girl, rather than unite himself with the dishonoured and the base.  Lilla, my own Lilla, I have been harsh and cruel; it is because I feel too keenly perhaps the gall in which your wretched brother’s conduct has steeped your life and mine; mine will soon pass away, but the dark shadow will linger still round you, my child, and condemn you to wretchedness; I cannot, cannot bear that thought!” and he struck his clenched hand against his brow.  “Why on the innocent should fall the chastisement of the guilty?  My child, my child, oh, banish from your unsuspecting heart the hopes of love returned.  Where in this selfish world will you find one to love you so for yourself alone, that family and fortune are as naught?”

“Why judge so harshly of your sex, Mr. Grahame?” said a rich and thrilling voice, in unexpected answer to his words, and the same young man whom we before mentioned as lingering by a village grave, stepping lightly from the terrace on which the large window opened into the room, stood suddenly before the astonished father and his child.  On the latter the effect of his presence was almost electric.  The rich crimson mantled at once over cheek and brow and neck, a faint cry burst from her lips, and as the thought flashed across her, that her perhaps too presumptuous hopes of love returned had been overheard, as well as her father’s words, she suddenly burst into tears of mingled feeling, and darting by the intruder, passed by the way he had entered into the garden; but even when away from him, composure for a time returned not.  She forgot entirely that no name had been spoken either by her father or by herself to designate him whom she confessed she loved; her only feeling was, she had betrayed a truth, which from him she would ever have concealed, till he indeed had sought it; and injured modesty now gave her so much pain, it permitted her not to rejoice in this unexpected appearance of one whom she had not seen since she had believed him dead.  She knew the churchyard was at this period of the evening quite deserted, and almost unconscious what she was about, she hastily tied on her bonnet, and with the speed of a young fawn, she bounded through the narrow lane, and rested not till she found herself seated beside her favourite grave; there she gave full vent to the thoughts in which pleasure and confusion somewhat strangely and painfully mingled.

“Can you, will you forgive this unceremonious and, I fear, unwished-for intrusion?” was the young stranger’s address to Grahame, when he had recovered from the agitation which Lilla’s emotion had called forth, he scarcely knew wherefore.  “To me you have ever extended the hand of friendship, Mr. Grahame, however severe upon the world in general, and will you refuse it now, when my errand here is to seek an even nearer and a dearer name?”