"Very melancholy and sad, then?"

"I never saw her weep," I said.

"What is it then, Martin?" she asked, earnestly.

"I cannot tell what it is," I answered. "Everything she does and says has a charm for me that I could never describe. With her for my wife I should be more happy than I ever was; with any one else I shall be wretched. That is all I know."

I had left my seat by Johanna, and was pacing to and fro in the room, too restless and miserable to keep still. The low moan of the sea sighed all about the house. I could have cast myself on the floor had I been alone, and wept and sobbed like a woman. I could see no loop-hole of escape from the mesh of circumstances which caught me in their net.

A long, dreary, colorless, wretched life stretched before me, with Julia my inseparable companion, and Olivia altogether lost to me. Captain Carey and Johanna, neither of whom had tasted the sweets and bitters of marriage, looked sorrowfully at me and shook their heads.

"You must tell Julia," said Johanna, after a long pause.

"Tell Julia!" I echoed. "I would not tell her for worlds!"

"You must tell her," she repeated; "it is your clear duty. I know it will be most painful to you both, but you have no right to marry her with this secret on your mind."

"I should be true to her," I interrupted, somewhat angrily.

"What do you call being true, Martin Dobree?" she asked, more calmly than she had spoken before. "Is it being true to a woman to let her believe you choose and love her above all other women when that is absolutely false? No; you are too honorable for that. I tell you it is your plain duty to let Julia know this, and know it at once."

"It will break her heart," I said, with a sharp twinge of conscience and a cowardly shrinking from the unpleasant duty urged upon me.

"It will not break Julia's heart," said Johanna, very sadly; "it may break your mother's."

I reeled as if a sharp blow had struck me. I had been thinking far less of my mother than of Julia; but I saw, as with a flash of lightning, what a complete uprooting of all her old habits and long-cherished hopes this would prove to my mother, whose heart was so set upon this marriage. Would Julia marry me if she once heard of my unfortunate love for Olivia? And, if not, what would become of our home? My mother would have to give up one of us, for it was not to be supposed she would consent to live under the same roof with me, now the happy tie of cousinship was broken, and none dearer to be formed.

Which could my mother part with best? Julia was almost as much her daughter as I was her son; yet me she pined after if ever I was absent long. No; I could not resolve to run the risk of breaking that gentle, faithful heart, which loved me so fully. I went back to Johanna, and took her hand in both of mine.

"Keep my secret," I said, earnestly, "you two. I will make Julia and my mother happy. Do not mistrust me. This infatuation overpowered me unawares. I will conquer it; at the worst I can conceal it. I promise you Julia shall never regret being my wife."

"Martin," answered Johanna, determinedly, "if you do not tell Julia I must tell her myself. You say you love this other girl with all your heart and soul."

"Yes, and that is true," I said.

"Then Julia must know before she marries you."

Nothing could move Johanna from that position, and in my heart I recognized its righteousness. She argued with me that it was Julia's due to hear it from myself. I knew afterward that she believed the sight of her distress and firm love for myself would dissipate the infatuation of my love for Olivia. But she did not read Julia's character as well as my mother did.

Before she let me leave her I had promised to have my confession and subsequent explanation with Julia all over the following day; and to make this the more inevitable, she told me she should drive into St.

Peter-Port the next afternoon about five o'clock, when she should expect to find this troublesome matter settled, either by a renewal of my affection for my betrothed, or the suspension of the betrothal. In the latter case she promised to carry Julia home with her until the first bitterness was over.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

A MIDNIGHT RIDE.

I took care not to reach home before the hour when Julia usually went to bed. She had been out in the country all day, visiting the south cliffs of our island, with some acquaintances from England who were staying for a few days in St. Peter-Port. In all probability she would be too tired to sit up till my return if I were late.

I had calculated aright. It was after eleven o'clock when I entered, and my mother only was waiting for me. I wished to avoid any confidential chat that evening, and, after answering briefly her fond inquiries as to what could have kept me out so late, I took myself off to my own room.

But it was quite vain to think of sleep that night. I had soon worked myself up into that state of nervous, restless agitation; when one cannot remain quietly in one; room. I attempted to conquer it, but I could not.

The moon, which was at the full, was shining out of a cloudless field of sky upon my window. I longed for fresh air, and freedom, and motion; for a distance between myself and my dear old home--that home which I was about to plunge into troubled waters. The peacefulness oppressed me.

About one o'clock I opened my door as softly as possible, and stole silently downstairs--but not so silently that my mother's quick ear did not catch the slight jarring of my door.

The night-bell hung in my room, and occasionally I was summoned away at hours like this to visit a patient. She called to me as I crept down the stairs.

"Martin, what is the matter?" she whispered, over the banisters.

"Nothing, mother; nothing much," I answered. "I shall be home again in an hour or two. Go to bed, and go to sleep. Whatever makes you so thin-eared?"

"Are you going to take Madam?" she asked, seeing my whip in my hand.

"Shall I ring up Pellet?"

"No, no!" I said; "I can manage well enough. Good-night again, my darling old mother."

Her pale, worn face smiled down upon me very tenderly as she kissed her hand to me. I stood, as if spellbound, watching her, and she watching me, until we both laughed, though somewhat falteringly.

"How romantic you are, my boy!" she said, in a tremulous voice.

"I shall not stir till you go back to bed," I answered, peremptorily; and as just then we heard my father calling out fretfully to ask why the door was open, and what was going on in the house, she disappeared, and I went on my way to the stables.

Madam was my favorite mare, first-rate at a gallop when she was in good temper, but apt to turn vicious now and then. She was in good temper to-night, and pricked up her ears and whinnied when I unlocked the stable-door. In a few minutes we were going up the Grange Road at a moderate pace till we reached the open country, and the long, white, dusty roads stretched before us, glimmering in the moonlight. I turned for St. Martin's, and Madam, at the first touch of my whip on her flanks, started off at a long and steady gallop.

It was a cool, quiet night in May. A few of the larger fixed stars twinkled palely in the sky, but the smaller ones were drowned in the full moonlight. The largest of them shone solemnly and brightly in afield of golden green just above the spot where the sun had set hours before. The trees, standing out with a blackness and distinctness never seen by day, appeared to watch for me and look after me as I rode along, forming an avenue of silent but very stately spectators; and to my fancy, for my fancy was highly excited that night, the rustling of the young leaves upon them whispered the name of Olivia. The hoof-beats of my mare's feet upon the hard roads echoed the name Olivia, Olivia!

By-and-by I turned off the road to got nearer the sea, and rode along sandy lanes with banks of turf instead of hedge-rows, which were covered thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them. As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in their new nests.

Now and then I came in full sight of the sea, glittering in the silvery light. I crossed the head of a gorge, and stopped for a while to gaze down it, till my flesh crept. It was not more than a few yards in breadth, but it was of unknown depth, and the rocks stood above it with a thick, heavy blackness. The tide was rushing into its narrow channel with a thunder which throbbed like a pulse; yet in the intervals of its pulsation I could catch the thin, prattling tinkle of a brook running merrily down the gorge to plunge headlong into the sea. Round every spar of the crags, and over every islet of rock, the foam played ceaselessly, breaking over them like drifts of snow, forever melting, and forever forming again.

I kept on my way, as near the sea as I I could, past the sleeping cottages and hamlets, round through St. Pierre du Bois and Torteval, with the gleaming light-houses out on the Hanways, and by Rocquaine Bay, and Vazon Bay, and through the vale to Captain Carey's peaceful house, where, perhaps, to-morrow night--nay, this day's night--Julia might be weeping and wailing broken-hearted.

I had made the circuit of our island--a place so dear to me that it seemed scarcely possible to live elsewhere; yet I should be forced to live elsewhere. I knew that with a clear distinctness. There could be no home for me in Guernsey when my conduct toward Julia should become known.

But now Sark, which had been behind me all my ride, lay full in sight, and the eastern sky behind it began to quicken with new light. The gulls were rousing themselves, and flying out to sea, with their plaintive cries; and the larks were singing their first sleepy notes to the coming day.

As the sun rose, Sark looked very near, and the sea, a plain of silvery blue, seemed solid and firm enough to afford me a road across to it. A white mist lay like a huge snow-drift in hazy, broad curves over the Havre Gosselin, with sharp peaks of cliffs piercing through.

Olivia was sleeping yonder behind that veil of shining mist; and, dear as Guernsey was to me, she was a hundredfold dearer.

But my night's ride bad not made my day's task any easier for me. No new light had dawned upon my difficulty. There was no loop-hole for me to escape from the most painful and perplexing strait I had ever been in.

How was I to break it to Julia? and when? It was quite plain to me that the sooner it was over the better it would be for myself, and perhaps the better for her. How was I to go through my morning's calls, in the state of nervous anxiety I found myself in?