Again that fatal pallor of mine swept from my heart to brow, and this time the large, dark gray eye of the boy was fixed on me with agony unspeakable.  He dropped it suddenly, wheeled on his supporting-sticks, and turned away, ghastly pale himself, to seek the shelter of the portico, where I joined him a few minutes later.

“Are you ill, George?” I asked.  “I felt anxious about you when I saw you leave the parlor so suddenly.  Have you had one of your spells?”

“A very severe spell, Miriam; but not of the usual kind.”  I understood him now.  There was a dry anguish in the very tone of his voice that smote heavily on my ear, yet I felt impatient with him, provoked beyond endurance.

“George, you should be more of a man,” I said, with asperity, “than to yield in this way to every impulse that besets you.  Your whims are hard to bear with lately, and scarcely worth understanding, I am convinced.”

“Would I were more or less of a man!” he answered, meekly.  “I should suffer less, probably.”

“Tell me what does ail you, George Gaston,” I added, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, caused by his patient, deprecating manner.  “You know you always have my warmest sympathy, and affection—­sisterly interest.”

“Ah, Miriam, it is that!  You love that man; yes, you love him a thousand-fold more than you have ever loved me.  I suspected it before—­I know it now; and I would rather see you floating a corpse on the river, with your dead face turned up to heaven, than married to that man, I hate him so!”

The last words were ground between his set teeth, and he trembled with passion.

“George,” I said, “you are still a child in years, in strength, in stature!  I, but a few months older, am already a woman in age, experience, feeling, character.  It is always thus with persons of our sexes who contract childish friendships—­one outgrows the other.  Then there are bitterness, reproach, suffering, resentment, on one part or the other.  But is this just?  Remember Byron and Miss Chaworth—­how was it with them?  He grasped too much, and lost every thing; he embittered his whole nature, his whole life, for the want of common-sense to guide him; but, with almost as much genius—­more, in some things, than he possessed—­you HAVE this governing principle.  I know my dearest George will do me justice.  I shall be an old, faded woman when you are of an age to marry—­unlovely in your eyes, George,”—­I hesitated.  “I have always hoped you would be our Mabel’s husband.  You know you have promised me.”  I smiled tearfully this time.

He bounded off the bench, interrupting me with a low cry.  “Do not mock me, Miriam Monfort,” he exclaimed, “if you can do no better.  My God! a baby of five years old suggested as a wife by you, my idol!  Oh, yes, wildly-beloved Miriam, the noblest, truest, as I have ever thought you—­the most beautiful, too, surely, of all God’s created beings!” and he caught my hand wildly.