happiness, contain and embody all the hopes left to me in life! But our
years are different, Evelyn; I have known sorrows,--and the
disappointments and the experience that have severed me from the common
world have robbed me of more than time itself hath done. They have
robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our race,--which may
it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain! To me, the time foretold by
the Preacher as the lot of age has already arrived, when the sun and the
moon are darkened, and when, save in you and through you, I have no
pleasure in anything. Judge, if such a being you can love! Judge, if my
very confession does not revolt and chill, if it does not present to you
a gloomy and cheerless future, were it possible that you could unite your
lot to mine! Answer not from friendship or from pity; the love I feel
for you can have a reply from love alone, and from that reasoning which
love, in its enduring power, in its healthful confidence, in its
prophetic foresight, alone supplies! I can resign you without a murmur;
but I could not live with you and even fancy that you had one care I
could not soothe, though you might have happiness I could not share. And
fate does not present to me any vision so dark and terrible--no, not your
loss itself; no, not your indifference; no, not your aversion--as your
discovery, after time should make regret in vain, that you had mistaken
fancy or friendship for affection, a sentiment for love. Evelyn, I have
confided to you all,--all this wild heart, now and evermore your own. My
destiny is with you."

Evelyn was silent; he took her hand, and her tears fell warm and fast
upon it. Alarmed and anxious, he drew her towards him and gazed upon her
face.

"You fear to wound me," he said, with pale lips and trembling voice.
"Speak on,--I can bear all."