"
"That you may know," answered Hartley, "I do not speak either by guess,
or from what you call jealousy, I tell you frankly, that Menie Gray
herself told me the state of her affections. I naturally communicated to
her the discourse I had with her father. I told her I was but too well
convinced that at the present moment I did not possess that interest in
her heart, which alone might entitle me to request her acquiescence in
the views which her father's goodness held out to me; but I entreated
her not at once to decide against me, but give me an opportunity to make
way in her affections, if possible, trusting that time, and the services
which I should render to her father, might have an ultimate effect in my
favour."
"A most natural and modest request. But what did the young lady say in
reply?"
"She is a noble-hearted girl, Richard Middlemas; and for her frankness
alone, even without her beauty and her good sense, deserves an emperor.
I cannot express the graceful modesty with which she told me, that she
knew too well the kindliness, as she was pleased to call it, of my
heart, to expose me to the protracted pain of an unrequited passion. She
candidly informed me that she had been long engaged to you in
secret--that you had exchanged portraits;--and though without her
father's consent she would never become yours, yet she felt it
impossible that she should ever so far change her sentiments as to
afford the most distant prospect of success to another.
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