“You have done me great injustice, by admitting such a thought, Eustace,” she replied; “and I appeal to your own conscience, if any caprice or coldness on my part, has given you reason to imagine that my feelings toward you have changed.”

De Valette colored highly, and paused a moment, before he replied;

“I have no inclination to complain, Lucie, but you have long known my sentiments too well to suppose I could view with indifference your acknowledged preference for another, and it was natural to believe that preference would diminish the interest which I once had the presumption to hope you entertained for me.”

“No circumstances can ever diminish that interest, Eustace,” she replied; “our long tried friendship, I trust, cannot be lightly severed, nor the pleasant intercourse which has enlivened the solitude of this wilderness be soon effaced from our remembrance:  believe me,” she added, with emotion, “whatever fate awaits my future life, my heart will always turn to you, with the grateful affection of a sister.”

“A sister!” De Valette repeated, with a sigh; and the transient flush faded from his cheek, while he stooped to caress the dog, which lay sleeping at his feet.

A moment of embarrassing silence ensued, which Lucie broke, by asking De Valette if he was returning to the fort, and proposing to accompany him.

“If the owner of this canoe was here to row us,” she continued, “I should like extremely to return in it, the water looks so cool and inviting, and I am already weary.”

“It would be madness to venture against the tide, in that frail vessel,” replied De Valette; “and, indeed, Lucie, I think your present situation is not perfectly safe.”

The tide was, in fact, rising with that rapidity so peculiar to the Bay of Fundy, and which, of course, extends, in some degree, to the rivers that empty into it; and while Lucie occupied the canoe, it had, unnoticed by her, been nearly freed from the reeds, which, a short time before, had so effectually secured it.  She observed that a wider space of water separated her from the land; and, striking one end of a paddle upon the sandy bottom, to support her as she rose in the rocking bark, she reached the other hand to De Valette, who stood ready to assist her in springing to the shore.  A slight dizziness came over her, caused by the constant but scarce perceptible motion of the canoe, and alarmed on feeling it dip to the water’s edge as she was on the point of leaping, she pressed forcibly against the oar, while the corresponding motion of her feet impelled the boat from the shore, with a velocity which instantly precipitated her into the waves.