“Indeed?” with a beaming smile long foreign to his countenance; “I see you are more easily imposed upon than ever. You know very well, it is patent to even Geoffrey, that I have always loved you exactly three times better than you love me. It is not in your nature to love as I do, though I never make much fuss about my feelings; still you may as well know that you are more to me, ten times over, than anything in the world. Even at the worst of times it has always been the same. What troubled me most, when I thought I was dying, was, not my many sins and shortcomings, not the thought of a future world, not what ought to come first with all of us, my soul; no, it was you, that I might only see you once more, even for an instant, was the prayer, the thought, that never left me night or day. I will not conceal from you, Alice, that I did my very best to stifle recollection, to forget you, to throw my whole heart into my profession. It was no good; nothing, not a draught of the Egyptian nepenthe itself would have banished you from my heart. When I first went to India I used to take long headlong rides, half in hopes of galloping away from my thoughts, half in hopes of killing myself. I sometimes think I was a little mad then.”
“Reginald, you must have been,” she exclaimed with conviction.
“Yes; you don’t half know how miserable I’ve been without you. Well, I quieted down in time, and when the fighting came off I took it out of myself in that way. But wherever I was, you were seldom absent from my mind; whether alone in my quarters, or sitting round a noisy camp fire, or on a still starry night, on the line of march, your face was ever before me. As to never caring for you as before, I believe I love you better—yes, better than when we were first married; though had anyone suggested such a possibility at the time, I would have throttled him on the spot. But do not,” he continued with a smile, “spread the fact among the young married ladies of your acquaintance; they might try and follow your example, with scarcely such happy results. Lovers’ quarrels are not always the renewing of love.”
“How can you joke on such a subject, Regy?” she asked almost inarticulately.
“Well, then, I’ll be serious once more. Never, as long as you live, doubt my love for you, Alice. Do you believe in it now?”
“I do,” she whispered, “and you have made me very, very happy.”
“Then you can’t refuse to make me happy! You have not given me one kiss yet, remember, and you have three years’ arrears to make up. To begin with, I’ll take the one you offered me the other night now.”
“I daresay you will,” she replied demurely, with a spice of her old spirit. “Have you ever heard, ‘He that will not when he may,’ etc.? And you took quite enough just now to last you for a long time,” she added, with a deep blush.
“You are not going to put me on allowance, are you? I tell you plainly I won’t stand it. After offering me a kiss you never can again pretend you are shy. Now, candidly, can you? I’m afraid you are a little impostor,” quietly insinuating his arm round her waist.
“I see you are as great a tease as ever, at any rate, Reginald,” she exclaimed tragically. “If you ever dare to allude to my foolish, idiotical offer, I won’t say what I shall do to you. I am not an impostor, and you know very well I am shy; you often said it—it——”