"I Say No". Wilkie Collins Collins

any sort of encouragement to try again?”

      “In one last word, I have made a fool of myself—and you have taken the kindest possible way of telling me so.”

      This time, she made no attempt to reply in his own tone. The good-humored gayety of her manner disappeared. She was in earnest—truly, sadly in earnest—when she said her next words.

      “Is it not best, in your own interests, that we should bid each other good-by?” she asked. “In the time to come—when you only remember how kind you once were to me—we may look forward to meeting again. After all that you have suffered, so bitterly and so undeservedly, don’t, pray don’t, make me feel that another woman has behaved cruelly to you, and that I—so grieved to distress you—am that heartless creature!”

      Never in her life had she been so irresistibly charming as she was at that moment. Her sweet nature showed all its innocent pity for him in her face.

      He saw it—he felt it—he was not unworthy of it. In silence, he lifted her hand to his lips. He turned pale as he kissed it.

      “Say that you agree with me?” she pleaded.

      “I obey you.”

      As he answered, he pointed to the lawn at their feet. “Look,” he said, “at that dead leaf which the air is wafting over the grass. Is it possible that such sympathy as you feel for Me, such love as I feel for You, can waste, wither, and fall to the ground like that leaf? I leave you, Emily—with the firm conviction that there is a time of fulfillment to come in our two lives. Happen what may in the interval—I trust the future.”

      The words had barely passed his lips when the voice of one of the servants reached them from the house. “Miss Emily, are you in the garden?”

      Emily stepped out into the sunshine. The servant hurried to meet her, and placed a telegram in her hand. She looked at it with a sudden misgiving. In her small experience, a telegram was associated with the communication of bad news. She conquered her hesitation—opened it—read it. The color left her face: she shuddered. The telegram dropped on the grass.

      “Read it,” she said, faintly, as Alban picked it up.

      He read these words: “Come to London directly. Miss Letitia is dangerously ill.”

      “Your aunt?” he asked.

      “Yes—my aunt.”