the contrary, her impatience will be insupportable if I do not relieve it immediately.'

She would have opened the door, but, preventing her, 'Can you indeed believe,' he cried, with vivacity; 'is it possible you can believe, that, having once caught a ray of light, to illumine and cheer the dread and nearly impervious darkness, that so long and so blackly overclouded all my prospects, I can consent, can endure to be cast again into desolate obscurity?'

Juliet, blushing, and conscious of his allusion to her reception of him in the church yard, for which, without naming Sir Lyell Sycamore, she knew not how to account, again protested that she must not be detained.

Still, however, half reproachfully, half laughingly, stopping her,[Pg 567] 'And is it thus,' he cried, 'that you summon me to Brighthelmstone,—only to mock my obedience, and disdain to hear me?'

[Pg 567]

'I, Sir?—I, summon you?'

'Nay, see my credentials!'

He presented to her the following note, written in an evidently feigned hand:

CONTENTS

'If Mr Harleigh will take a ramble to the church-yard upon the Hill, at Brighthelmstone, next Thursday morning, at five o'clock, he will there meet a female fellow-traveller, now in the greatest distress, who solicits his advice and assistance, to extricate her from her present intolerable abode.'

Deeply colouring, 'And could Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'even for a moment believe,—suppose,—'

He interrupted her, with an air of tender respect. 'No; I did not, indeed, dare believe, dare suppose that an honour, a trust such as might be implied by an appeal like this, came from you! Yet for you I was sure it was meant to pass; and to discover by whom it was devised, and for what purpose, irresistibly drew me hither, though with full conviction of imposition. I came, however, pre-determined to watch around your dwelling, at the appointed hour, ere I repaired to the bidden place. But what was my agitation when I thought I saw you! I doubted my senses. I retreated; I hung back; your face was shaded by your head-dress;—yet your air,—your walk,—was it possible I could be deceived? Nevertheless, I resolved not to 

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