They passed out from the patio to the Convent garden—a perfect paradise that night for lovers. The moon was at its full—a southern moon—and flooded every place with warm white light; above was the deep purple sky, and high into it rose the steep crags of the great Rock. The soft and mellow air was loaded with fragrance; a wealth of southern flowers, all now in their full bloom, filled the beds about, and among them were great bushes like trees of syringa, and of the dama de noche, which only give forth their full perfume at night. The sweet strains of an excellent band, playing for the dancers in the great ball-room up-stairs, rose and fell like a distant echo, and added greatly to the enchantment of the scene.
Walking here with the girl of his heart, Herbert spoke eloquently and well. He told everything that had happened to him from his earliest days. The poor home in Triggertown barracks; the sudden appearance of the great lady who had charged herself with his education; the fine prospects which seemed to open before him on approaching manhood, and how they had been suddenly ruined. He spoke feelingly of the treatment he had received at the hands of Sir Rupert Farrington.
‘Which you so nobly repaid,’ interjected Edith.
He narrated the circumstances of his birth and parentage, and expatiated upon the affectionate devotion of old Mrs. Larkins, who had been a second mother to him; he touched lightly upon the chances which were still his of obtaining a title to a large estate and a good old name. He finished, and waited to hear what she would say.
But she was silent, and for so long that he feared she was annoyed.
‘You are not vexed? I have not bored you, I hope?’ he said.
‘Oh, no, no; I was only thinking—thinking how hardly you had been used—how some of us, too, had misjudged you.’
She spoke in a low soft voice, which thrilled through him.
‘You were not one of those, surely? You, whose good opinion I value above all earthly things? Oh, Miss Prioleau, there is so much I have still to say to you that I hardly know how to begin. Can you not guess why I have told you my life? I wished only to interest you in myself, to explain why as yet I appear to be other than I really am. I felt it necessary, because I feared you despised me for my lowly birth—’