Nearly a fortnight had now elapsed, when Jane, walking one day in a small shrubbery that skirted the little lawn before her father’s door, received a note by a messenger whom she recognized as a servant of Mr. Osborne’s.

The man, after putting it into her hands, added: 

“I was desired, if possible, to bring back an answer.”

She blushed deeply on receiving it, and shook so much that the tremor of her small white hands gave evident proof of the agitation which it produced in her bosom.  She read as follows:—­

“Oh why is it that I cannot see you! or what has become of you?  This absence is painful to me beyond the power of endurance.  Alas, if you loved with the deep and burning devotion that I do, you would not thus avoid me.  Do you not know, and feel, that our hearts have poured into each other the secret of our mutual passion.  Oh surely, surely, you cannot forget that moment—­a moment for which I could willingly endure a century of pain.  That moment has thrown a charm into my existence that will render my whole future life sweet.  All that I may suffer will be, and already is softened in the consciousness that you love me.  Oh let me see you—­I cannot rest, I cannot live without you.  I beseech you, I implore you, as you would not bring me down to despair and sorrow—­as you would not wring my heart with the agony of disappointment, to meet me this evening at the same place and the same hour as before.

“Yours—­yours for ever,

“H.  O.

“N.B.—­The bearer is trustworthy, and already acquainted with the secret of our attachment, so that you need not hesitate to send me a reply by him—­and let it be a written one.”

After pursuing this, she paused for a moment, and felt so much embarrassed by the fact of their love being known to a third person, that she could not look upon the messenger, while addressing him, without shame-facedness and confusion.

“Wait a little,” she said at length, “I will return presently”—­and with a singular conflict between joy, shame, and terror, she passed with downcast looks out of the shrubbery, sought her own room, and having placed writing materials before her, attempted to write.  It was not, however, till after some minutes that she could collect herself sufficiently to use them.  As she took the pen in her hand, something like guilt seemed to press upon her heart—­the blood forsook her cheeks, and her strength absolutely left her.

“Is not this wrong,” she thought.  “I have already been guilty of dissimulation, if not of direct-falsehood to my father, and now I am about to enter into a correspondence without his knowledge.”

The acuteness of her moral sense occasioned her, in fact, to feel much distress, and the impression of religious sanction early inculcated upon a mind naturally so gentle and innocent as hers, cast by its solemn influence a deep gloom over the brief history of their loves.  She laid the pen down, and covering her face with both hands, burst into a flood of tears.