Charles Dickens.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [January 28, 1860.] 313

have steeled his heart against her. I tried hard
to feel that Sir Percival was to blame, and to
say so; but my womanhood would pity him, in
spite of myself.

"I gratefully accept your faith and truth,"
he said. " The least that you can offer is more to
me than the utmost that I could hope for from
any other woman in the world."

Her left hand still held mine; but her right-
hand hung listlessly at her side. He raised it
gently to his lips—touched it with them, rather
than kissed it—bowed to me—and then, with
perfect delicacy and discretion, silently quitted
the room.

She neither moved, nor said a word, when lie
was gone—she sat by me, cold and still, with
her eyes fixed on the ground. I saw it was
hopeless and useless to speak; and I only put
my arm round her, and held her to me in silence.
We remained together so, for what seemed a
long and weary time—so long and so weary,
that I grew uneasy and spoke to her softly, in
the hope of producing a change.

The sound of my voice seemed to startle her
into consciousness. She suddenly drew herself
away from me, and rose to her feet.

"I must submit, Marian, as well as I can,"
she said. " My new life has its hard duties;
and one of them begins to-day."

As she spoke, she went to a side-table near
the window, on which her sketching mate-
rials were placed; gathered them together
carefully; and put them in a drawer of her
cabinet. She locked the drawer, and brought
the key to me.

"I must part from everything that reminds
me of him," she said. " Keep the key wherever
you please—I shall never want it again."

Before I could say a word, she had turned
away to her bookcase, and had taken, from it
the album that contained Walter Hartright's
drawings. She hesitated for a moment, holding
the little volume fondly in her hands—then
lifted it to her lips and kissed it.

"Oh, Laura! Laura!" I said, not angrily, not
reprovingly—with nothing but sorrow in my
voice, and nothing but sorrow in my heart.

"It is the last time, Marian," she pleaded.
"I am bidding it good-by for ever."

She laid the book on the table, and drew out
the comb that fastened her hair. It fell, in its
matchless beauty, over her back and shoulders,
and dropped round her, far below her waist.
She separated one long, thin lock from the rest,
cut it off, and pinned it carefully, in the form of
a circle, on the first blank page of the album.
The moment it was fastened, she closed the
volume hurriedly, and placed it in my hands.

"You write to him, and he writes to you,"
she said. " While I am alive, if he asks after
me, always tell him I am well, and never say I
am unhappy. Don't distress him, Marian—for
my sake, don't distress him. If I die first, pro-
mise you will give him this little book of his
drawings, with my hair in it. There can be no
harm, when I am gone, in telling him that I put
it there with my own hands. And say—oh,

Marian, say for me, then, what I can never say
for myself—say I loved him!"

She flung her arms round my neck, and whis-
pered the last words in my ear with a passionate
delight in uttering them which it almost broke
my heart to hear. All the long restraint she
had imposed on herself, gave way in that first
last outburst of tenderness. She broke from
me with hysterical vehemence, and threw herself
on the sofa, in a paroxysm of sobs and tears that
shook her from head to foot.

I tried vainly to soothe her and reason with
her: she was past being soothed, and past being
reasoned with. It was the sad, sudden end, for
us two, of this memorable day. When the fit
had worn itself out, she was too exhausted to
speak. She slumbered towards the afternoon;
and I put away the book of drawings so that
she might not see it when she woke. My face
was calm, whatever my heart might be, when
she opened her eyes again and looked at me.
We said no more to each other about the dis-
tressing interview of the morning. Sir Per-
cival's name was not mentioned, Walter Hart-
right was not alluded to again by either of us
for the remainder of the day.

9th.—Finding that she was composed and like
herself, this morning, I returned to the painful
subject of yesterday, for the sole purpose of im-
ploring her to let me speak to Sir Percival and
Mr. Fairlie, more plainly and strongly than she
could speak to either of them herself, about this
lamentable marriage. She interposed, gently
but firmly, in the middle of my remonstrances.

"I left yesterday to decide," she said; " and
yesterday has decided. It is too late to go
back."

Sir Percival spoke to me this afternoon, feel-
ingly and unreservedly, about what had passed
in Laura's room. He assured me that the un-
paralleled trust she had placed in him had
awakened such an answering conviction of her
innocence and integrity in his mind, that he was
guiltless of having felt even a moment's unworthy
jealousy, either at the time when he was in her
presence, or afterwards when he had withdrawn
from it. Deeply as he lamented the unfortunate
attachment which had hindered the progress he
might otherwise have made in her esteem and
regard, he firmly believed that it had remained
unacknowledged in the past, and that it would
remain, under all changes of circumstance
which it was possible to contemplate, unacknow-
ledged in the future. This was his absolute
conviction; and the strongest proof he could
give of it was the assurance, which he now
offered, that he felt no curiosity to know whether
the attachment was of recent date or not, or
who had been the object of it. His implicit
confidence in Miss Fairlie made him satisfied
with what she had thought fit to say to him, and
he was honestly innocent of the slightest feeling
of anxiety to hear more.

He waited, after saying those words, and looked
at me. I was so conscious of my unreasonable
prejudice against him—so conscious of an un-