"In part, I confess," was the answer to this implied question.

"I suspected--I feared so," he rejoined, despondingly. "Would to
Heaven you could have acted entirely aside from that motive, and then
I might have found cause to hope. But now," he added, with suppressed
emotion--"now--But O, how can I harbor the chilling thought of being
doomed to love without a return! Say, fairest and best, must this
indeed be so?"

The downcast look and the quick-heaving bosom were the only reply; and
the impassioned lover, gathering courage even from these uncertain
indications, proceeded:--

"Years, eventful years, have passed away, my dear Miss Haviland, since
your face, like some unexpected vision, first greeted my sight, and
its image, at the same moment, as a thing not to be resisted, sunk
deep into my heart. And there, from that hour to this, it has
constantly remained--remained in spite of all my attempts to exclude
it; for I struggled hard to banish it, as I had so much reason to do.
You were the daughter of wealth and prosperity--I the son of poverty
and misfortune; and, what was more revolting to my pride, you were
found with my political opponents--my oppressors--nay, in the closest
connection, apparently, with my bitterest foe. But with all the aid
which these thoughts and associations were calculated to lend me, I
struggled in vain. And when I was driven, poor, sorrowing, and
desperate, from my home, by the wrongs and insults of this same man,
of whose position towards you I was not left in doubt, I carried that
image with me. It would not be eradicated; it would not even fade; but
became more deeply impressed, and grew more and more vivid with time