Chirrup, chirrup to it, and it may come!"
Standing a moment, trying to collect her thoughts and wholly failing,
Vesta accepted the confidence he held out to her with open arms.
Blushing as she had never blushed in her life, though he could not know
it in the evening dark, she walked to him and kissed him once.
"Will that encourage you to advise me like a friend?" she said.
"Alas! no," sighed Milburn fervently, "it makes me the more your unjust
lover. I cannot advise you away from me. Oh, let me plead for myself. I
love you!"
"Then what shall I do," exclaimed Vesta, in low tones, "if you are
unable to rise to the height of my friend, and my father is your slave?
Do you think God can bless your prosperity, when you are so hard with
your debtor? On me the full sacrifice falls, though I never was in your
debt consciously, and I have never to my remembrance wished injury to
any one."
"Would you accept your father's independence at the expense of the most
despised man in Princess Anne?" Milburn spoke without changing his kind
tone. "Would you let me give him the fruit of many years of hard toil
and careful saving, in order that I shall be disappointed in the only
motive of assisting him--the honorable wooing of his daughter?"
She felt her pride rising.
"Your father's debts to me are tens of thousands of dollars," continued
Milburn. "Do you ask me to present that sum to you, and retire to my
loneliness out of this bright light of home and family, warmth and
music, that you have made? That is the test you put my love to:
banishment from you.
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