“I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life.  Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit.  But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.”

He drew his chair close, and took her hand, when he said “hopeless love.”  There was a momentary silence.  He, who thrilled everybody, had doubtless thrilled her.  I thought I now understood the words which had dropped from him when he was alone in the drawing-room, “I’ll do it to-day.”  Alas! the most rigid propriety could hardly have failed to discover that he was doing it now.

“Have you forgotten what we agreed on, Godfrey, when you spoke to me in the country?  We agreed that we were to be cousins, and nothing more.”

“I break the agreement, Rachel, every time I see you.”

“Then don’t see me.”

“Quite useless!  I break the agreement every time I think of you.  Oh, Rachel! how kindly you told me, only the other day, that my place in your estimation was a higher place than it had ever been yet!  Am I mad to build the hopes I do on those dear words?  Am I mad to dream of some future day when your heart may soften to me?  Don’t tell me so, if I am!  Leave me my delusion, dearest!  I must have that to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else!”

His voice trembled, and he put his white handkerchief to his eyes.  Exeter Hall again!  Nothing wanting to complete the parallel but the audience, the cheers, and the glass of water.

Even her obdurate nature was touched.  I saw her lean a little nearer to him.  I heard a new tone of interest in her next words.

“Are you really sure, Godfrey, that you are so fond of me as that?”

“Sure!  You know what I was, Rachel.  Let me tell you what I am.  I have lost every interest in life, but my interest in you.  A transformation has come over me which I can’t account for, myself.  Would you believe it?  My charitable business is an unendurable nuisance to me; and when I see a Ladies’ Committee now, I wish myself at the uttermost ends of the earth!”

If the annals of apostasy offer anything comparable to such a declaration as that, I can only say that the case in point is not producible from the stores of my reading.  I thought of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes.  I thought of the Sunday-Sweetheart-Supervision.  I thought of the other Societies, too numerous to mention, all built up on this man as on a tower of strength.  I thought of the struggling Female Boards, who, so to speak, drew the breath of their business-life through the nostrils of Mr. Godfrey—­of that same Mr. Godfrey who had just reviled our good work as a “nuisance”—­and just declared that he wished he was at the uttermost ends of the earth when he found himself in our company!  My young female friends will feel encouraged to persevere, when I mention that it tried even My discipline before I could devour my own righteous indignation in silence.  At the same time, it is only justice to myself to add, that I didn’t lose a syllable of the conversation.  Rachel was the next to speak.