A CONTRE-TEMPS. 119

ever, and greatly agitated. He would have taken her
hand, but she withdrew it hastily, but not without
his feeling how it trembled ; and standing still, she
said gravely, “As yet all liberties with me are insults.
Listen to me before you touch my hand, for as yet
I appear to you but in a doubtful light. Fifteen
years ago you parted with a little sister—do you
remember her ?”

“‘T do,” said the young man, striking his hand
upon his forehead, “‘ I remember her well.”

‘¢T, then, am that sister!”

“ You!” exclaimed-he, with a feeling of almost
disappointment. ‘* You that little Susan whom I
loved so much!”

“‘ If I were then called Susan,” said she, * I have
since then been called Marianne—there was much in
that time to be forgotten.”

“There was! there was!” said Reynolds, ‘ but
we will not think of it now. We will forget all the
past just now ; some other time you shall tell me all,
we will rejoice now in the present,” said he, taking
her now unresisting hand, and putting it within
his.

“ And you will see our poor father, then,” said she,
“and acknowledge him ?”

He started, stopped short, and looked at her almost
in horror.

_ “It is so, then!” she said reproachfully, “you

_ refuse to acknowledge him! ”

_ “How can this be?”’ said he, “is our father living?

I thought that they had taken his life.”

_ “No, thank God!” she returned, “ he was trans-
ported ; but,” she said, imagining that now she saw

why her father had been treated as an impostor by