"Believe equally of me that I would not flatter you. I have told you no falsehood as yet, and I have a right to claim your belief. As you look on me, so do I on you. I look up to you as one whose destiny must be high. To me there is that about you which forbids me to think that your path in the world can ever be other than conspicuous. Your husband, at least, will have to live before the world."
"I shall not have the slightest objection to his doing so; but that, I think, will depend a great deal more on him than on me."
Bertram was very anxious to say something which might tend towards the commingling of his destiny with hers. He was hardly yet prepared to swear that he loved her, and to ask her in good set terms to be his wife. But he did not like to leave her without learning whether he had at all touched her heart. He was fully sure now that his own was not whole.
"Come, Mr. Bertram," said she; "look at the sun, how nearly it is gone. And you know we have no twilight here. Let us go down; my aunt will think that we are lost."
"One minute, Miss Waddington; one minute, and then we will go. Miss Waddington—if you care enough for me to bid me take up any profession, follow any pursuit, I will obey you. You shall choose for me, if you will."
She blushed, not deeply, but with a colour sufficiently heightened to make it visible to him, and with a tingling warmth which made her conscious of it herself. She would have given much to keep her countenance, and yet the blush became her greatly. It took away from the premature firmness of her womanly look, and gave her for the moment something of the weakness natural to her age.
"You know that is nonsense: on such a subject you must of course choose for yourself."
Bertram was standing in the path before her, and she could not well go on till he had made way for her. "No," said he; "thinking as I do of you, feeling as I do regarding you, it is not nonsense. It would be absolute nonsense if I said so to your aunt, or to Mrs. Hunter, or to Miss Jones. I could not be guided by a person who was indifferent to me. But in this matter I will be guided by you if you will consent to guide me."
"Of course I shall do no such thing."
"You have no personal wish, then, for my welfare?"