She looked at him with a half-wistful expression on her beautiful face.
"I must be very wicked," she said; "indeed I know that I am. I should be looking forward to it with rapture, if any one young or amusing were going with me; but to sit in closed carriages with Sir Arthur and Lady Vaughan—to travel, yet see nothing—is dreadful."
"But you are attached to them," he said—"you are fond of them, are you not, Hyacinth?"
"Yes," she replied, piteously; "I should love them very much if they did not make me so miserable. They are over sixty, and I am just eighteen—they have forgotten what it is to be young, and force me to live as they do. I am very unhappy."
She bent her beautiful face over the flowers, and he saw her eyes fill with tears.
"It is a hard lot," he said; "but there is one remedy, and only one. Do you love me, Hyacinth?"
She looked at him with something of childish perplexity in her face.
"I do not know," she replied.
"Yes, you do know, Hyacinth; you know if you love me well enough to marry me."