"No, I will do no harm, grandma," Margaret said, and she got her hat and went to the woods.
It was a lovely morning; the birds were singing in full note; the butterflies were flitting from wild flower to wild flower; the miniature cascade made a delicious music. But it and the birds seemed to sing the same song for Margaret. "I love you! I love you!"
Surely, if she lived to be a hundred, whatever happened in her life, she should never forget this spot sacred to her in the first passion that had ever stirred her maiden heart. Always before her eyes in the future would rise this glade at Leyton woods; always would she hear the ceaseless babble of the brook, the song of the linnets!
She had not long to wait. There came a quick, firm step—she knew it so well, although it had come into her life so recently—and with a spring like a boy's, Lord Blair was beside her; not only beside her, but on one knee.
For a moment he seemed unable to speak, and the color came and went on his tanned cheek.
"Do you know," he said with a smile, and in that hushed, lingering voice which love takes to itself, "all the way I have been tormenting myself with the dread that you wouldn't come!"
"I said that I would come!" she said, with downcast eyes.
"I know! And I ought to have known that you would rather die than break your word. But I thought that perhaps you would be prevented, that you might have told some one—Mrs. Hale——"
"I have told no one," said Margaret, with a sudden feeling of gratitude.
"That is right," he said; then, as the shadow swept over her face, he went on quickly—"Not that I should have cared for myself. No! I would like all the world to know how I love you; not that they could possibly know that. Not even you can guess at that, Margaret. But I should like to tell everybody that I love you, and that——But, ah, Margaret, you haven't told me yet! Are you going to let me stay? Are you going to let me go on loving you? Dearest, you have not come to be hard and cruel to me! You will say 'yes?'" and he held out his arms to her.