"To ME!"
"Yes, to you! Why, have you not been telling me that you were engaged to him?"
"Telling you that I was engaged to Fred!" rejoined Miss Patty. "Why, what could put such an idea into your head? Fred is engaged to Kitty. You asked me if it was not so; and I told you, yes, but that it was a secret at present. Why, then of whom were you talking?"
"Of you!"
"Of me?"
"Yes, of you!" And the scales fell from the eyes of both, and they saw their mutual mistake.
There was a silence, which Verdant was the first to break.
"It seems that love is really blind. I now perceive how we have been playing at cross questions and crooked answers. When I asked you about Mr. Delaval, my thoughts were wholly of you, and I spoke of you, and not of your sister, as you imagined; and I fancied that you answered not for your sister, but for yourself. When I spoke of my attachment, it did not refer to your sister, but to you."
"To me?" softly said Miss Patty, as a delicious tremor stole over her.
"To you, and to you alone," answered Verdant. The great stumbling-block of his doubts was now removed, and his way lay clear before him. Then, after a momentary pause to nerve his determination, and without further prelude, or beating about the bush, he said, "Patty - my dear Miss Honeywood - I love you! do you love me?"