And, then—sweet balm in Gilead!
She was waiting for me, flitting like a ghost-moth about the dark old panels of the room from which she had dismissed me a little while ago. She put her finger to her lips, and hushed me in, and shut the door. She had dressed for dinner during the interval of my absence, and was a lovelier, more fairy-like apparition by twenty degrees. I felt like taking a dream into my arms—the sweet soft fragrance of her hair, and lifted face, and young white innocent bosom. A thread of diamonds dewed her neck—she melted to me like a very dew of girlhood, and loved and clung to me, and whispered impassioned that I was hers, she could not spare me to another, and I might claim her when I would and she would come to me.
Her love, her rapture, her absorbing sympathy, were inexpressibly touching to me in my moody distress. Let all the world go by, so long as this dear flower of it sweetened on my heart.
“Ira,” I whispered, fondling her in an ecstasy, “I believe I know where your aunt has gone.”
“O, Richard!” she answered. “That is heavenly. Am I to know no more?”
“Wait a little, you lovely thing. I may want you all before long. I am very much alone. Perhaps—Ira, will you meet me to-morrow, under the old hawthorn?”
“Yes, Richard. Anywhere, and at any time you tell me.”
“Say at three o’clock.”
“Shall I make a note of it, Richard?”
“I’ll do it for you—look, on the inside of your elbow. Now bend your arm, and keep it hidden from everybody.”