Dolly shook her head, but whether in dissent or in sorrow it was not easy to say.
“Shall I tell you more?” cried Tony, as he drew her arm closer to him, and took her hand in his; “shall I tell you more, Dolly? Skeff read me as I could not read myself. He said to me, 'Tony, this is no case of love, it is the flattered vanity of a very young fellow to be distinguished not alone by the prettiest, but the most petted woman of society. You,' said he, 'are receiving all the homage paid to her at second-hand.' But more than all this, Dolly; he not merely saw that I was not in love with Alice Trafford, but he saw with whom my heart was bound up, for many and many a year.”
“Her sister, her sister Bella,” whispered Dolly.
“No, but with yourself, my own own Dolly,” cried he; and turning, and before she could prevent it, he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her passionately.
“Oh, Tony!” said she, sobbing, “you that I trusted, you that I confided in, to treat me thus.”
“It is that my heart is bursting, Dolly, with this long pent-up love, for I now know I have loved you all my life long. Don't be angry with me, my darling Dolly; I'd rather die at your feet than hear an angry word from you. Tell me if you can care for me; oh, tell me, if I strive to be all you could like and love, that you will not refuse to be my own.”
She tried to disengage herself from his arm; she trembled, heaved a deep sigh, and fell with her head on his shoulder.
“And you are my own,” said he, again kissing her; “and now the wide world has not so happy a heart as mine.”
Of those characters of my story who met happiness, it is as well to say no more. A more cunning craftsman than myself has told us that the less we track human life the more cheerily we shall speak of it. Let us presume, and it is no unfair presumption, that, as Tony's life was surrounded with a liberal share of those gifts which make existence pleasurable, he was neither ungrateful nor unmindful of them. Of Dolly I hope there need be no doubt. “The guid dochter is the best warrant for the guid wife:” so said her father, and he said truly.
In the diary of a Spanish guerilla chief, there is mention of a “nobile Inglese,” who met him at Malta, to confer over the possibility of a landing in Calabria, and the chances of a successful rising there. The Spaniard speaks of this man as a person of rank, education, and talents, high in the confidence of the Court, and evidently warmly interested in the cause. He was taken prisoner by the Piedmontese troops on the third day after they landed, and, though repeatedly offered life under conditions it would have been no dishonor to accept, was tried by court-martial, and shot.