the boldness—the crime, to love—to love—O God! to adore you! and then to leave you for ever!"
Pale, trembling, scarcely preserved from falling by the tree against which she leaned, Lucy listened to this abrupt avowal.
"Dare I touch this hand," continued Clifford, as he knelt and took it, timidly and reverently; "You know not, you cannot dream, how unworthy is he who thus presumes—yet, not all unworthy, while he is sensible of so deep, so holy a feeling as that which he bears to you. God bless you, Miss Brandon!—Lucy, God bless you!—and if hereafter you hear me subjected to still blacker suspicion, or severer scrutiny than that which I now sustain—if even your charity and goodness can find no defence for me,—if the suspicion become certainty, and the scrutiny end in condemnation, believe, at least, that circumstances have carried me beyond my nature; and that under fairer auspices, I might have been other than I am!" Lucy's tear dropped upon Clifford's hand, as he
