door, and beheld—ah! gracious Heaven! what were the feelings of that moment, St. Julian!—I involuntarily receded, and sunk half fainting upon a chair. The words, the tenderness of St. Julian soon revived me, and brought me to a perfect sense of my happiness; he implored my pardon for the agitation he had caused me.
"He had loved me, he declared, almost from the first moment he beheld me, and would at once have divulged his passion, had he not feared its being then discovered to my aunt, whose malice he knew would betray him to his father; he had therefore determined, if he beheld no chance of losing me, to conceal it till the expectations he entertained of a splendid independence at the death of a very old relative were realized, and he consequently secured from suffering any pecuniary distress through the displeasure of his father, which he could not deny his thinking would follow the disclosure of our union.
