Colonel Dacre’s answer is not worth recording; but it was very expressive and impressive, for Lady Gwendolyn looked very red after it, and was not sorry to hide her confusion on his breast, though, perhaps, she was hardly woman enough yet to understand the mighty absorbing passion she had inspired.
At ten o’clock precisely Colonel Dacre loosened his hold on her and said gently:
“Now, my darling, you must go to bed. To-morrow will be a fatiguing day for you, and I shall want to see a few roses at starting. Oh! Gwen, when I think what to-morrow is to be, it seems to me that I must be dreaming. All my own—my very own, ‘to love and to cherish till death us do part.’ It is too much happiness! Give me one kiss—the first I have ever had from you, sweetest—to make it all seem real.”
“No,” she answered shyly, and trembling; “I have always vowed that my husband should have my first kiss.”
“Then I am to wait till to-morrow?”
“Yes, Lawrence.”
“Heaven bless you, my dear life!” he murmured; then kissed both the hands she extended to him, and hurried off.
It seemed a dreadful parting to him, and yet it was only for twelve hours.
Lady Gwendolyn could hardly realize that she was going to be married when she woke in the morning. But when her new maid appeared, her head just visible under an avalanche of white drapery, she began to think it was probable, and that she had better get up at once, and adorn herself to please her master’s eye.
Her master!