The letter being despatched, Lord Arandale and Edmund rejoined the ladies who were collecting in the drawing-room. Edmund looked into every recess of every window, and cast a glance over every group, but evidently saw not the object of his researches. He passed on to the greenhouse, and at length discovered Julia and Frances collecting some flowers. He went towards them, offering to assist them; for he had been so much engaged with Lady Susan and Lord Arandale during breakfast, that he had scarcely spoken to Julia that morning.

“How is it possible,” said Frances, laughing, “that amid your important arrangements, you can spare time for an occupation so trifling?”

“Our important arrangements, as you call them,” replied Edmund, smiling in his turn, “are all completed.”

“Indeed!” said Frances, “and papa and mamma’s consent obtained?”

“Why! what do you know about it, Frances?” asked Edmund, with some surprise, and colouring at the idea that his benevolent purpose should be thus made public.

“Oh, we know quite well, I assure you,” she replied playfully.

“Let me do that for you, Julia!” said Edmund, starting forward to assist her he named, in plucking a branch of geranium, which she was very awkwardly attempting to reach.

“Good Heavens, Julia! what is the matter?” he exclaimed, catching up her hand; for in presenting the flower he had just pulled, he perceived that her countenance expressed the utmost wretchedness; and that her tears, in despite of an evident struggle to suppress them, were falling fast. She turned away, drew her hand forcibly out of his, and hurried to a further part of the greenhouse. He thought of the hand he had seen her give to Henry; permit him to retain so long, and even raise to his lips; and a vague sensation of pain and dread came over him. He followed her, however; he found her hastily drying her eyes. Again she endeavoured to avoid him.

“I have no right,” he said, detaining her, “to demand your confidence, Julia; perhaps, I am guilty of impertinence in thus seeking it—withhold it, if it must be so; but do not make me miserable, by seeming not only unhappy, but seriously offended with me!” His voice and manner renewed Julia’s habitual feelings of tenderness.

“I have no desire to make you miserable, Edmund! I wish you, sincerely wish you all happiness,” she replied, in a scarcely audible voice, “but do not speak to me now; do not speak to me, just now!”

He endeavoured to take her hand, and was about to reply; but she shrunk from his touch, and hastened, as for refuge, into the midst of the company in the drawing-room. He followed, and stood near her in silence. Frances had quitted the greenhouse, as soon as she made her laughing speech to Edmund, and, consequently, without perceiving her sister’s emotion.

At this moment Colonel Murray, of the Moorlands, was announced. He led by the hand a fine boy of about twelve or thirteen; with fair, curly, glossy hair; fair skin, glowing cheeks, soft hazel eyes, and a sweet open expression of countenance; the mouth and smile, as was afterwards universally observed, very like Edmund’s. He was dressed in the uniform of one of the Highland hunts, and carried in his hand a cap and plume, like young Norval’s.

“This is Arthur Oswald, the son of our friend Sir Archibald,” said the Laird, presenting him to Lord Arandale.

“Indeed!” cried his lordship, taking the boy’s hand, and glancing a look towards Edmund, which was answered by one of intelligence on his part. “I am truly happy to see him—fine little fellow! How did you leave your mamma, my dear? Well, I hope?”

“She was quite well when we came away,” he answered, “but that’s a good while now.”

The Laird explained, that Arthur had been brought over to the mainland by his father, who had left him at his, the Laird’s house, since his first arrival. The Laird added, that he was taking Arthur with him to the races, and had called at Arandale, for the purpose of joining himself, if permitted, to their agreeable party. He might have said, further, but of course he did not, that he had furnished Arthur with the becoming dress he wore on the occasion. Every one noticed the young stranger in some kind or complimentary manner; and Lord Arandale, presenting him particularly to Edmund, asked him if he should like to be a sailor. The boy answered, with quickness and energy, that he should indeed.

“Then, this gentleman,” said the Earl, “will take you with him, and teach you to be a sailor; and a good and a great one, if you follow his example.”

Edmund had already taken Arthur’s hand, drawn him towards him, and seemed as it were, to appropriate him. The boy now looked up in his face, as if for a confirmation of what Lord Arandale had said. Edmund smiled kindly; and Arthur answered the smile by that genuine mark of a child’s confidence, a soft pressure of the hand that held his. Edmund felt at the moment, notwithstanding the strangeness of Julia’s manner, that it was impossible to be quite miserable, while one has the power of doing any good. This pleasurable impulse called up the natural ambition of the heart to be happy; and, scarcely conscious why, he turned to Julia, but found, what he had never found before this morning, that he could not meet her eye. He moved a step or two, which brought him near her. He addressed some remark to her; she answered without looking up, affecting to be very busy searching for something in her reticule.

It must have been, thought Edmund, the imprudence with which I last night betrayed my feelings, which has thus, upon serious consideration, offended her; though, at the time, she did not, certainly, show displeasure. And he sighed heavily. She now raised her eyes, with involuntary quickness, to his face. She had never seen so much unhappiness there. She looked at him, for the space of a second, with a mingled expression of surprise and tenderness, which he could in no way comprehend. Edmund stooped, and, on pretence of looking over her shoulder out of a window facing which she stood, he whispered softly:—“I see, Julia, that the presumption of my manner, last night, has offended you; justly, I allow; but have some compassion for an involuntary error! Some pity for—for——” The low and hurried accents of Edmund; the confused state of Julia’s own feelings; the busy voices of the rest of the party; all prevented her hearing more than a few occasional words, from which she collected, only, that Edmund saw her change of manner, and sought to know the cause. This, of course, she could not explain. “Soon, I must return to sea,” he continued, finding he could obtain neither look nor word; “for what foreign station, or for how many years, I know not! Possibly, I may never see you again, Julia. Do not, then, by a resentment so determined, so unforgiving, embitter the few short moments to which I would fondly cling, as the only solace of my solitary, and hopeless existence!” This last sentence, which, from the growing warmth of his manner, was uttered in a somewhat more audible tone than the rest, was all that Julia had distinctly heard.

“Your solitary and hopeless existence, Edmund!” she exclaimed, with a look and voice of astonishment.

“Yes, Julia; such feelings as mine must be hopeless! it is the only apology that can be made for their presumption.”

“Lord Arandale has refused his consent,” thought Julia, “and shall I add to his evident affliction? I imagined him perfectly happy! and that he had found means to be so, independent of all his first friends; or I could never have been so unkind to him.” At the conclusion of this reflection, she looked up with an expression that, for a moment, almost restored him to happiness.

The company were now filing off, on their way down to the carriages. Edmund and Julia were the last in the room. She paused, gave him her hand, and said:—“I once promised you to be always your friend! I renew that promise now; and I know I can also answer for the unshaken continuance of Frances’s kind regard. Will this, in any degree, console you, Edmund, under those mortified and disappointed feelings, of which you speak so bitterly?” And she spoke a little bitterly herself.

“Oh, yes! It will—it must—it does!” he exclaimed, pressing the offered hand to his lips. She drew it gently away; but took his arm as they followed the rest of the party. If he considered it so very wrong even to hope, she thought, why did he ask her to marry him? and Lady Susan, herself, had told Frances that he had done so.

Edmund was, or at least believed that he ought to have been, cheered in one point of view; for Julia appeared to be reconciled to him, appeared to have pardoned his rashness: but, he was saddened too: indeed, there was a peculiar dreariness about his present feelings; for it now seemed to him, that they fully understood each other, and that Julia had forbid him to hope. Yet, he thought, he had never hoped. What was it, then, of which he now deplored the loss? Some undefined, unacknowledged expectations, must have been founded on the pleasure he had so often, with intoxicating delight, marked in Julia, when he had, by look or word, betrayed some part of that love, he thought it his duty not to declare; till his birth should be distinctly ascertained; a contingency which, when put in high spirits by a smile, he had, sometimes, thought by no means improbable! Now, Julia knew, (he believed,) the full extent of his love; and she had showed any thing but gratification. She had, it is true, mingled with her displeasure at his presumption, a generous compassion for his sufferings; and she had offered him, mournfully, but kindly, friendship as a consolation for the hopelessness of the passion she had yet decidedly checked. And was not Julia’s friendship an inestimable treasure? Was he not an object of regard, of affection to her?—Oh, how delightful that idea; were it not blasted by the thought, that he must, one day, see her bestow warmer, dearer, fonder feelings on another! on some one, who having all else that this world can give, must have their abundance crowned by the bliss of possessing Julia’s love! Or should she ever be Henry’s? He looked on her as he asked himself this question; but he thought of the mountainous waves of the sea in a storm, and, for a moment, felt the sinful wish that he might be overwhelmed by them, ere so terrible an apprehension should be realized!

Julia, as she descended the stairs, and stepped into the carriage, wondered how Edmund could love a comparative stranger, as Lady Susan certainly was, so much as to be rendered thus unhappy on her account: but he was unhappy, and therefore she would never be unkind to him again! She could not, it was true, have the same pleasure in feeling that excessive friendship for him now, as when she thought her friendship was all the happiness he desired: yet, if it was all the happiness he possessed, it should never be taken from him.

Before the company quitted the drawing-room for the carriages, a trifling circumstance occurred, which we omitted mentioning in its place. We shall, however, relate it now, as it may hereafter be remembered with interest. At the time that Edmund, as we have already described, moved towards Julia, Henry happened to take up nearly the same relative position with respect to Arthur, which our hero had filled the moment before. The boy, who had not noticed the change, laid hold of the side of Henry’s coat, very gently; and having long had the habit of thinking and speaking of his father with a degree both of seriousness and of mystery, on account of his unhappy state of mind, he said in a whisper: “But where is poor papa?”