had recently streamed from them, seemed congealed upon her bloodless cheeks. "God of Heaven!" exclaimed Morley," "" what means this? Ellen, beloved, adored! do you not hear me? will you not speak to me-to Morley, your Morley?" and he gently pressed her in his arms. The name he uttered, like a charm, dissolved the spell that bound her. A long drawn sigh, as if struggling from a breaking heart, escaped her cold, quivering lips; a fresh fountain of tears burst forth; and with an hysteric sob she fell upon the bosom of her lover. The alarmed, but enraptured Morley, folded her in his arms, and bent to kiss away her tears-when, with a sudden start, she disengaged herself from his embrace, and drawing back, looked wildly and earnestly in his face. "Morley," she said, in a voice of thrilling tone, "do you love me?" "Dearest, best Ellen," he replied, "do you, can you doubt it?" "Do you love me, Morley?" she repeated with increased earnestness. knees. "Truly-devotedly-madly," cried Morley, on his "By the heaven that is shining over us "No more oaths-enough of protestations. Are you willing, by one action-at this moment, to prove that I am truly dear to you, Morley?" T "I am, though it carry with it my destruction!" "I ask not your destruction-I implore you to prevent mine. Return!" Morley gazed at her, as if doubting his sense of hearing. "Return!" "Return, instantly!" "Ellen, are you serious-are you," he might have added, "in your senses?" but she interrupted him. do "I am serious-I am not mad, Morley; no, nor inconstant, nor fickle," she added, reading the expression that was arising on Morley's countenance. "That I love, and in that love am incapable of change, not, Morley, insult me by doubting, even by a look. But O, if you love me as you ought, as you have sworn you do, as a man of honour, I implore you to take me back to my father "To your father!" exclaimed Morley, almost unconscious of what he said. "Ay, to my father, my gray headed, my doting, my confiding father: take me to him before his heart is broken by the child he loves. I have been with him," she cried in wild agony, even now, as I lay in your arms, spell bound in my trance, while the carriage rolled on to my perdition. I could not move-I could not speak; but I knew where I was, and whither I was hurrying: yet even then was I with my father," she said, with a voice and look of supernatural |