Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/224

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222
ETHEL CHURCHILL.

silence; it were an impertinence to assure you of my own!"

Henrietta gazed upon him steadfastly; his presence brought back the first, the sweetest dream of her life. Her love for Sir George Kingston seemed to vanish like a shadow; deep in her heart she felt that it was a poor fanciful emotion, born of vanity, and that craving for excitement, the inevitable result of her artificial state of existence. No; he whom she had really loved, stood there before her—pale, earnest—with the same dark and eloquent eyes, as when they used to kindle with light over the fine creations of the olden poets. Loving and beloved by him, how different would her destiny have been! An utter sense of desolation came over her; a terror of the future, an overwhelming agony in the present. That he, of all others, should be the one to witness her humiliation!

"I will trespass no longer," said Walter, after a moment's pause. "Let me hope that the bitterness of this moment will be forgotten