“What I have said,” he continued earnestly, and taking her hand with a gentle but respectful pressure, “has been spoken as one who is dying speaks with his fleeting breath; for evermore my lips shall be shackled against my heart, and the past shall be sealed and avoided as a forbidden theme.  We are, then, good friends at parting, are we not?”

“Yes.”

“And, believe me, I shall be happiest when I think that you are happy—­for you will be happy.”

She sighed so deeply that the words were checked upon his lips, as if some new emotion had turned the current of his thought.

“Are you not happy?”

The tears that, in spite of her endeavor, burst from beneath the downcast lids, answered him as words could not have done.  He was agitated and unnerved, and, leaning his brow against his hand, remained silent while she wept.

“Harold is a noble fellow,” he said at last, after a long silence, and when she had grown calmer, “and deserves to be loved as I am sure you love him.”

“Oh, he has a noble heart, and I would die rather than cause him pain.”

“And you love him?”

“I thought I loved him.”

The words were faint—­hardly more than a breath upon her lips; but he heard them, and his heart grew big with an undefined awe, as if some vague danger were looming among the shadows of his destiny.  Oriana turned to him suddenly, and clasped his hand within her trembling fingers.

“Oh, Mr. Wayne! you must go, and never see me more.  I am standing on the brink of an abyss, and my heart bids me leap.  I see the danger, and, oh God!  I have prayed for power to shun it.  But Arthur, Arthur, if you do not help me, I am lost.  You are a man, an honest man, an honorable man, who will not wrong your friend, or tempt the woman that cannot love you without sin.  Oh, save me from myself—­from you—­from the cruel wrong that I could even dream of against him to whom I have sworn my woman’s faith.  I am a child in your hands, Arthur, and in the face of the reproaching Providence above me, I feel—­I feel that I am at your mercy.  I feel that what you speak I must listen to; that should you bid me stand beside you at the altar, I should not have courage to refuse.  I feel, oh God!  Arthur, that I love you, and am betrothed to Harold.  But you are strong—­you have courage, will, the power to defy such weakness of the heart—­and you will save me, for I know you are a good and honest man.”

As she spoke, with her face upturned to him, and the hot tears rolling down her cheeks, her fingers convulsively clasped about his hand, and her form bending closer and closer toward him, till her cheek was resting on his bosom, Arthur shuddered with intensity of feeling, and from his averted eyes the scalding drops, that had never once before moistened their surface, betrayed how terribly he was shaken with emotion.

But while she spoke, rapt as they were within themselves, they saw not one who stood with folded arms beside the rustic bench, and gazed upon them.