“Not aunt,” cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck; “I’ll never call her aunt—sister, my own dear sister, that something taught my heart to love so dearly from the first! Rose, dear, darling Rose!”
Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.
They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at length announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it, glided away, and gave place to Harry Maylie.
“I know it all,” he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. “Dear Rose, I know it all.”
“I am not here by accident,” he added after a lengthened silence; “nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday—only yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?”
“Stay,” said Rose. “You do know all.”
“All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the subject of our last discourse.”
“I did.”
“Not to press you to alter your determination,” pursued the young man, “but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.”
“The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,” said Rose firmly. “If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night? It is a struggle,” said Rose, “but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.”
“The disclosure of to-night,—” Harry began.
“The disclosure of to-night,” replied Rose softly, “leaves me in the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.”
“You harden your heart against me, Rose,” urged her lover.
“Oh, Harry, Harry,” said the young lady, bursting into tears; “I wish I could, and spare myself this pain.”
“Then why inflict it on yourself?” said Harry, taking her hand. “Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.”
“And what have I heard! What have I heard!” cried Rose. “That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned all—there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.”
“Not yet, not yet,” said the young man, detaining her as she rose. “My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought in life except my love for you: have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and shame; but a home—a heart and home—yes, dearest Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.”
“What do you mean!” she faltered.
“I mean but this—that when I left you last, I left you with a firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right. Such power and patronage: such relatives of influence and rank: as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in England’s richest county; and by one village church—mine, Rose, my own!—there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!”