“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 tonight? It is a struggle,” said Rose, “but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.”