Orpha had a favorite collie which from the first had shown a preference for my company that was sometimes embarrassing but oftener pleasing, since it gave me an opportunity to whisper many secrets in his ear. As I stood there with my eyes on the gallery, he came running to me with so many evidences of affection that I was fain to take it as an omen that all would be well with me when she who held him dear would greet me in her turn.
When would she come? The music of the falling drops plashing in their basin behind me was sweet, but I longed for the tones of her voice. Why did she linger? Dare I guess, when at last I heard her footfall in the gallery above, and caught the glimpse of her figure, first in one opening of its lattice work and then in another as she advanced towards the stairs which were all that now separated us, unless it were the sorrow whose ravages in her tender breast she might seek to hide, and might succeed in hiding from every eye but mine?
No, I would guess at nothing. I would wait; but my heart leaped high, and when she had passed the curve marking the turn of the great staircase, I bounded forward and so had the sweetest vision that ever comes to love—the descent, from tread to tread of the lady of one’s heart into the arms which have yearned for her in hope and in doubt for many weary days.
For I knew before she reached me that she loved me. It was in her garb of white, filmy and virginal, in her eager, yet timid step, in the glow of youth—of joyous expectation which gave radiance to her beauty and warmth to my own breast. But I said not a word nor did I move from my position at the foot of the stairs till she reached the last step but one and paused; then I uttered her name.
Had I uttered it before? Had she ever heard it before? Surely not as at that moment. For her eyes, as she slowly lifted them to mine, had a look of wonder in them which grew as I went on to say:
“Before I speak a word of all that has been burning in my heart since first I saw you from the gallery above us, I want you to know that I consider all the splendor surrounding us as yours, both by right of birth and the love of your father. I am ready to sign it all over—what we see and what we do not see—if you desire to possess it in freedom, or think you would be happier with a mate of your own choosing. I love you. There! I have said it, Orpha—but I love you so well that I would rather lose all that goes with your hand than be a drag upon your life, meant as you are for peace and joy and an unhampered existence. Do you believe that?”
“Yes, I believe that. But—” Oh, the delicious naïveté of her smile, bringing every dimple into play and lighting up into radiance the gravity of her gaze, “why should you think that I might want to be free to live in this great house alone? For me, that would be desolation.”
“Desolation because you would be alone or because—” even now I hardly dared to say it—“because it would be life without reality—without love? Orpha, I must know;—know beyond the shadow of a doubt. I cannot take the great gift bequeathed me by your father, unless with it receive the greatest gift of all—your undivided heart. You are young and very lovely—a treasure which many men will crave. I should never be satisfied for you to be merely content. I want you to know the thrill—the ecstasy of love—such love as I feel for you—”
I could not go on. The pressure of all the past was upon me. The story of the days and nights when in rapture and in tragedy she was my chief thought, my one unfailing inspiration to hold to the right and to dare misapprehension and the calumny of those who saw in me an interloper here without conscience or mercy, passed in one wild phantasmagoria through my mind, rendering me speechless.
With that fine intuition of hers—or perhaps, because she had shared alike my pains and my infinite horrors—she respected my silence till the time came for words and then she spoke but one: