“Ask me not, Ralph.  I may not utter it.  It must not be whispered to myself, though I perpetually hear it.  It is no impropriety—­no peculiarity—­no wrong thought or deed of yours, that occasions it.  The evil is in me; and hence you can do nothing which can possibly change my determination.”

“Strange, strange girl!  What mystery is this?  Where is now that feeling of confidence, which led you to comply with my prayer, and consider me as your brother?  Why keep this matter from me—­why withhold any particular, the knowledge of which might be productive of a remedy for all the difficulty.”

“Never—­never.  The knowledge of it would be destructive of all beside.  It would be fatal—­seek not, therefore, to know it—­it would profit you nothing, and me it would crush for ever to the earth.  Hear me, Ralph—­my brother!—­hear me.  Hitherto you have known me—­I am proud to think—­as a strong-minded woman, heedless of all things in her desire for the good—­for the right.  In a moment of peril to you or to another, I would be the same woman.  But the strength which supports through the trial, subsides when it is over.  The ship that battles with the storms and the seas, with something like a kindred buoyancy, goes down with the calm that follows their violence.  It is so with me.  I could do much—­much more than woman generally—­in the day of trial, but I am the weakest of my sex when it is over.  Would you have the secret of these weaknesses in your possession, when you must know that the very consciousness, that it is beyond my own control, must be fatal to that pride of sex which, perhaps, only sustains me now?  Ask me not further, Ralph, on this subject.  I can tell you nothing; I will tell you nothing; and to press me farther must only be to estrange me the more.  It is sufficient that I call you brother—­that I pledge myself to love you as a sister—­as sister never loved brother before.  This is as much as I can do, Ralph Colleton—­is it not enough?”

The youth tried numberless arguments and entreaties, but in vain to shake her purpose; and the sorrowful expression of his voice and manner, not less than of his language, sufficiently assured her of the deep mortification which he felt upon her denial.  She soothed his spirit with a gentleness peculiarly her own, and, as if she had satisfied herself that she had done enough for the delicacy of her scruples in one leading consideration, she took care that her whole manner should be that of the most confiding and sisterly regard.  She even endeavored to be cheerful, seeing that her companion, with her unlooked-for denial, had lost all his elasticity; but without doing much to efface from his countenance the traces of dissatisfaction.

“And what are your plans, Lucy?  Let me know them, at least.  Let mo see how far they are likely to be grateful to your character, and to make you happy.”

“Happy! happy!” and she uttered but the two words, with a brief interval between them, while her voice trembled, and the gathering suffusion in her large and thickly-fringed blue eyes attested, more than anything besides, the prevailing weakness of which she had spoken.