The Old Homestead Part 68

"I must; ask yourself if I could remain here another hour without being in soul what she has called me in name--a pauper."

Farnham paused. Rapid changes, the shadows of many a turbulent thought, swept over his face. Isabel lifted her eyes to his with a look of sorrowful appeal, as if in waiting for him to confirm her resolution.

"But where will you go, my Isabel?"

"I have not yet determined--but this lady has taught an to respect myself. I have been spending an idle, useless life, dependent on her bounty, a pet, a protege which no human being endowed with health and energy should ever content herself with being. Henceforth I will redeem the past."

"Stay with me, my Isabel, stay in your own home, not as a dependent, not subject to any one's caprice. Isabel Chester throw off these cruel prejudices; become my wife, and this day shall you have a right here, holy as any that ever existed!"

"Farnham!" cried the old lady, starting fiercely upon the scene, "remember the difference, remember who she is, who you are and who I am!"

"He need not, madam. I remember all this. But only to a.s.sure myself that I am incapable of becoming his wife," answered Isabel. "Do not suppose that I have any of that miserable pride what would make me reject this n.o.ble offer, because, in the chances of life, he happens to be rich and I poor. I give to wealth no such importance. Human souls should match themselves without trappings, that have nothing to do with their greatness. To say that I will not marry Mr. Farnham because he would give me a legal right to spend wealth, which I have no power to increase, would be to acknowledge a mean reluctance to receive where I would gladly give. No, madam, it is not because I deem myself in any way an unfit wife for Mr. Farnham, that I reject, gratefully reject, his offer; but I will never enter a family where these things can be supposed to give superiority, never while one of its members rejects me because of my poverty. More than this, I have taken a solemn vow, for causes for which you are not responsible, madam, never to marry your son."

"Isabel, Isabel!" exclaimed young Farnham, with a look of distress, "you cannot love me, or this pride--this wicked vow, would not separate us."

Isabel laid her hand on his arm; her eyes filled, and her lips began to tremble.

"I _do_ love you, heart and soul I love you! but I cannot become your wife. It would be to separate the son from his mother; to grasp at happiness through an act of disobedience; it would be to mingle my life with--with--you know, Frederick, it is impossible."

"But my mother will consent," cried the young man, turning with a look of anxious appeal to Mrs. Farnham, who stood near a window, angrily beating the carpet with her foot.

"You needn't look this way--you needn't expect it. I never will give my consent. If Mr. Farnham's son chooses to marry a pauper, I will never own him again."

Isabel cast one sorrowful look at her lover, and feeling her eyes grow misty as they met his, turned away.

"I will go now," she said, in a hollow voice, and, with a heart that lay heavy and burning like heated lead in her bosom, she left the room.

Young Farnham followed her, pale and anxious.

"Isabel, sweet Isabel! you cannot be in earnest!"

"Miserably in earnest!" she answered, staggering blindly forward, for a faintness crept over her.

He caught her in his arms.

"I knew--I knew it could not be! you have no strength to put this cruel threat in force against me."

"Don't--oh! don't, I am faint, my heart is breaking--let me go while I can!"

She clung to him as she spoke, and rested her head wearily on his shoulder, as he strained her closer to his heart.

"Oh, my Isabel, you love me, you have told me so now for the first time, with the very lips that renounce me for ever. You love me, Isabel!"

"You felt it--before this you knew it," she murmured amid her tears.

"Yes, yes, I felt it; what need has the heart of words? I felt it truly, as now; but the sound is so sweet from your lips. Isabel; say it again."

"Yes, why not, as we shall part so soon. I love you, oh, how much I love you!"

"Then stay with me."

"No, no!"

"I can and will protect you from every annoyance. Stay with me, Isabel!"

"Oh, if I could--if I only could!" cried the young creature, looking wistfully at him, "but that terrible, terrible oath."

"Forget it--the oath, if you made one, was an act of frenzy--cast it aside as such. You can, you will, my beloved. A little time, a little patience, and all will be well. Come, come, stop crying, my heart aches to see your tears. Be comforted, and say once more that you love me."

"I do, I do!"

"And that you will never leave me?"

She drew a deep, unsteady breath; her eyes began to brighten through their tears; he held her close to his breast, and pressed his lips, quivering with an ecstasy of love, upon her forehead.

"You will stay--you _will_ stay!"

She released herself gently from his arms, her eyes were flooded with tenderness, her cheeks lighted up with a glow of joyous shame. With that graceful homage which comes so naturally to the heart of a loving woman, she took his hand and pressed it to her lips, and stood drooping beneath the overflow of tenderness that filled her heart, as a flower bends on its stock when loaded with honey-dew.

But this beautiful submission did not satisfy him; he encircled her again with his arm.

"Tell me in words, dearest--tell me in words, consenting words, or I shall gather them from your lips."

Blushing and agitated, she attempted to withdraw from his arms, but softly as a bird moves in its nest.

"Speak, Isabel--speak, and promise me!"

Her eyes were filled with tears, and her face burned with blushes; where was her pride, where all her haughty resolutions now? Her lips trembled apart, and the words he coveted were forming upon them--but that instant the door opened, and Mrs. Farnham looked through, regarding them with a cold sneer.

Isabel started as if a viper had stung her, tore herself from Farnham's arms, and fled.

CHAPTER XLV.

OLD MEMORIES AND YOUNG HEARTS.

Away, away, on the wide, wide world-- With aching heart and fevered brain, Like a broken waif she is sharply hurled, To her dreary orphan life again.

When uncle Nathan led his nephew into the house, and told aunt Hannah who he was, she grew pallid as a corpse, and when the young man took her hand, she began to shiver from head to foot, till the chattering of her teeth was audible in the stillness.

"It is our nephew, little Anna's boy, come to live with us, Hannah."

"To live with us?" she repeated, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"Yes," answered uncle Nathan, taking the youth's hand between both his plump palms, and smoothing it caressingly as he would have quieted a kitten, for he felt all the chill that was in her voice. Where else should our sister's child make his home?"