‘Only in dreams. I think she died very young.’
‘Like mine. O, Joan! were we not guided by these two to meet one another? I think we need not have feared the spirits of the ilex grove. Tell me, dear’—he pressed closer, and laid his cheek coaxingly against the soft shoulder; and she flushed, but suffered him—even leaned a little, irresistibly, towards the caress. ‘I have been longing, yet agonising, from the first to put one question to you—just one. Joan—you are still unwed?’
Looking straight before her, she whispered yes—it stood to reason.
‘Why?’ he asked rapturously.
‘If you do not know, Brion, how can I tell you?’
Every nerve in his body thrilled with ecstasy.
‘You need not,’ he said. ‘I hide my eyes before such loving constancy—I will, Joan, yes, I will, in your hair, in your neck. O, how could I ever have doubted you, my own maid!’
‘Did you doubt me, Brion?’
‘The way of parting has been long, sweetheart, and sometimes unhappy; but it finds me at the blissful end, as at the beginning, thy maiden knight. Yet there have been moments when despair and loneliness—O, Joan! will you forgive me, not that I broke my plight, but that ever I thought I could?’
‘Poor boy! It is different with a man.’