“Yes; if you are in the same mind, Kitty, and have not forgotten my existence. No fear of my not coming to claim the only privilege I could get out of them.”
“But, don’t you see, Tom, it comes to much the same thing after all. Fortunately, we understood one another before they knew anything about it, and we can’t undo that. We are engaged between ourselves, and we know in our own hearts that we could never give one another up. Of course we can submit quietly—outwardly, you know. Indeed, we have no choice in the matter, it appears; we must submit. I need not wear any ring, and I wouldn’t talk about you, or anything of that sort; but we can write to one another, and that will be a comfort. I will buy a quantity of the thinnest foreign paper that is made, and the finest steel pens, and keep a sort of diary for you of everything that happens, to post every mail; and you can do the same.”
“But, Kitty——”
“Oh, Tom, don’t let us mind! It would have been worse if you had gone to father first, and he had forbidden you to propose to me. We must have been quite parted then, for, of course, I couldn’t have written to you. But now the mail every month will be something to look forward to, though the months will seem like years. And we shall always have the feeling of knowing that we belong to each other, whatever happens.” Tom sat down on a sofa near us, and drew me into his arms. There was a solemnity in the way he did it that made me stop talking.
“My darling,” he said, sorrowfully, smoothing my hair in that tender way he had, “you don’t know the worst of it. They have put me upon my honour not to bind you in any way.”
“I bind myself,” I replied shortly.
“I’m not to allow you to be engaged, in any sense, Kitty.”
“But if I choose to consider myself so, that is my own business.”
“Well, I only hope that you will consider yourself so, and keep yourself for me. That is all I shall have to live on, Kitty, remember that. But in the mean time—in the mean time we have to do just exactly as if we were utter strangers.”
“You don’t mean we are not to write?”