“Norah! no one on earth could say such a thing of you—you who would lift a man, not lower him. You could not be ungraceful if you tried; and as for my family and friends, if there is one who will not hold out both hands to you and love you, he or she is no kin or friend of mine.”
“But, Arthur, they might be right! I have learned enough to know that there is so much more to learn—that the great world you live in is so different from our quiet, narrow life here. Indeed, I do not mean to be nervous as to the future, or to make any difficulties; but, dear, I should like to be able to do all that is right and necessary as your wife. Remember, that when I leave here I shall not have one of my own kin or friends to tell me anything—from whom I could ask advice. They do not themselves even know what I might want—not one of them all! Your world and mine, dear, are so different—as yet.”
“But, Norah, shall I not be always by your side to ask?”—I felt very superior and very strong as well as very loving as I spoke.
“Yes, yes; but oh! Arthur—can you not understand—I love you so that I would like to be, even in the eyes of others, all that you could wish. But, dear, you must understand and help me here. I cannot reason with you. Even now I feel my lack of knowledge, and it makes me fearful. Even now”—her voice died away in a sob, and she hid her beautiful eyes with her hand.
“My darling! my darling!” I said to her passionately—all the true lover in me awake—“Tell me what it is that you wish, so that I may try to judge with all my heart.”
“Arthur! I want you to let me go to school—to a good school for a while—a year or two before we are married. Oh! I should work so hard! I should try so earnestly to improve—for I should feel that every hour of honest work brought me higher and nearer to your level!”
My heart was more touched than even my passion gave me words to tell—and I tried, and tried hard, to tell her what I felt—and in my secret heart a remorseful thought went up: “What have I done in my life to be worthy of so much love!”
Then, as we sat hand in hand, we discussed how it was to be done—for that it was to be done we were both agreed. I had told her that we should so arrange it that she should go for awhile to Paris, and then to Dresden, and finish up with an English school. That she could learn languages, and that amongst them would be Italian; but that she would not go to Italy until we went together—on our honeymoon. She bent her head and listened in silent happiness; and when I spoke of our journey together to Italy, and how we would revel in old-world beauty—in the softness and light and colour of that magic land—the delicate porcelain of her shell-like ear became tinged with pink, and I bent over and kissed it. And then she turned and threw herself on my breast, and hid her face.
As I looked I saw the pink spread downward and grow deeper and deeper, till her neck and all became flushed with crimson. And then she put me aside, rose up, and with big brave eyes looked me full in the face through all her deep embarrassment, and said to me:—
“Arthur, of course I don’t know much of the great world, but I suppose it is not usual for a man to pay for the schooling of a lady before she is his wife—whatever might be arranged between them afterwards. You know that my dear father has no money for such a purpose as we have spoken of, and so if you think it is wiser, and would be less hardly spoken of in your family, I would marry you before I went—if—if you wished it. But we would wait till after I came from school to—to—to go to Italy,” and whilst the flush deepened almost to a painful degree, she put her hands before her face and turned away.