My Library

genius of protection over the cottage. There they talked gaily enough at first, but presently in a tender and pathetic strain; and it was clear that there had sprung up between them already something much warmer than friendship, yet which was not love. When they rose to enter the house, the last words uttered by the girl— uttered in the same singularly inspired strain observed on their first meeting—were, “Yes! I will love you; but not here, not now, perhaps not on this earth. Yet I will be your prop, your stay, though deep seas between us roll. Listen! When I am in danger you will know it, wherever you may be. When you are in danger you will see me. Forget not what I say. Ask me no questions. Your fate is a singular one, but not more so than my own. Good night! Good-bye! We will see each other no more at present—it is not permitted!” And without another word she abruptly left him, darted into the house, passed up the stairs, and was gone like a spirit. Next day, at the solicitation of the chief and others who took an interest in young Beverly, he consented to go with me to my home, many leagues from that spot; and, accordingly, in due time we arrived there, and for several months he was an inmate of my house; and, while under the shadow of ill health and its consequent sympathetic state, I became intimate with many of the loftier and profound secrets of the celebrated Rosicrucian fraternity, with which he