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e first time before so many eyes. I had watched, as may well be believed, for his arrival, and a little before dark had seen him enter his mother's house. He would surely come over soon; I ran down the long walk, and paced up and down beneath the trees, awaiting him. As soon as he came in sight I hastened toward him; he met me kindly, but the change that had been in his letters was plainer yet in his manner. It struck a chill to my heart.
"I suppose you have a house full of company, as usual," he remarked presently, glancing at the brilliant windows.
"Yes, we have a number of friends staying with us. Will you go in and see them? There are several whom you know."
"Thank you,--not to-night; I am not in the mood. And I have a good deal to say to you, Juanita, that deeply concerns us both."
"Very well," I replied; "you had better tell me at once."
We walked on to the old garden-chair, and sat down as we had done that memorable night. We were both silent,--I from disappointment and apprehension. He, I suppose, was collecting himself for what he had to say.
"Juanita," he spoke at last, taking my hand in his, "I do not know how you will receive what I am about to tell you. But this I wish you to promise me: that you will believe I speak for our best happiness, --yours as well as mine."
"Go on," was all my reply.
"A year ago," he continued, "we sat here as we do now, and, spite of doubts and misgivings and a broken resolution, I was happier than I shall ever be again. I had loved you from the first moment I saw you, with a passion such as I shall never feel for any other woman. But I knew that we were both poor; I knew that marriage in our circumstances could only be disastrous. It would wear out your youth in servile cares; it would cripple my energies; it might even, after a time, change our love to disgust and aversion. And so, though I believed myself not indifferent to you, I resolved never to speak of my love, but to struggle against it, and root it out of my