or the prescience of the sharp pang of parting —­for he knew enough of Hilda to know that, what he had to say once said, she would trouble him no more—­whether it was these things, or whatever it was that affected him, he grew most unaccountably anxious and depressed.  Moreover, in this congenial condition of the atmosphere of his mind, all its darker and hidden characteristics sprang into a vigorous growth.  Superstitions and presentiments crowded in upon him.  He peopled his surroundings with the shades of intangible deeds that yet awaited doing, and grew afraid of his own thoughts.  He would have fled from the spot, but he could not fly; he could only watch the flicker of the moonlight upon the peaceful pool beside him, and—­wait.

At last she came with quick and anxious steps, and, though but a few minutes before he had dreaded her coming, he now welcomed it eagerly.  For our feelings, of whatever sort, when directed towards each other, are so superficial as compared with the intensity of our fears when we are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar.

“At last,” he said, with a sigh of relief.  “How late you are!”

“I could not get away.  There were some people to dinner;” and then, in a softened voice, “How pale you look!  Are you ill?”

“No, only a little tired.”

After this there was silence, and the pair stood facing one another, each occupied with their own thoughts, and each dreading to put them into words.  Once Philip made a beginning of speech, but his voice failed him; the beating of his heart seemed to choke his utterance.

At length she leaned, as though for support, against the trunk of a pine-tree, in the boughs of which the night breeze was whispering, and spoke in a cold clear voice.

“You asked me to meet you here to-night.  Have you anything to say to me?  No, do not speak; perhaps I had better speak first.  I have something to say to you, and what I have to say may influence whatever is in your mind.  Listen; you remember what passed between us nearly a month ago, when I was so weak as to let you see how much I loved you?”

Philip bowed his head in assent.

“Very good.  I have come here to-night, not to give you any lover’s meeting, but to tell you that no such words must be spoken again, and that I am about to make it impossible that they should be spoken either by you or by me.  I am going away from here, never, I hope, to return.”

“Going away!” he gasped.  “When?”

Here was the very thing he hoped for coming to pass, and yet the words that should have been so full of comfort fell upon him cold as ice, and struck him into misery.

“When! why, to-morrow morning.  A relation of mine is ill in Germany, the only one I have.  I never saw him, and care nothing for him, but it will give me a pretext; and, once gone, I shall not return.  I have told Maria that I must go.  She cried about it, poor girl.”