"Well, yes; you may if you will not laugh at my old-fashioned fancy. I do not mind telling you that one of my favorites is, 'Then You'll Remember Me.' I suspect that there are selections from Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin that are inexpressibly grand, but for soulful melody there is nothing like the sweet, dear old song."
Alice threw her spirit into the old song, and with eyes glistening through her tears, remarked sadly, "This old melody is very dear to me, very, very dear."
"I should imagine so," replied the judge, "and I know if it could syllable its love it would tell you of its passion for you. I think it has taken possession of your whole heart, Miss Seymour," continued the high official with animation.
To this tentative kind of inquiry Alice did not reply, but looked blushingly into the judge's earnest face and sweetly laughed, like the artless girl she was.
The golden hours were fast slipping away, and the little goldsmith was hammering, too, at the tiny arrows.
"I fear I have afflicted you very cruelly, my sweet friend," the judge observed after a pause, as he noted that the hour hand of the ivory time piece upon the mantel had run its circuit eight times in succession. "I doubt not that I have wearied you by the unreasonable length of my visit; but like a bound captive, I have been held in thrall with silken chains for forty-eight hours."
"And have you really enjoyed the time?" she asked, quite artlessly.
"Why, my dear Alice," he now ventured to address her, "I am in love—enmeshed in the delightful toils of the most beautiful woman in the wide, wide world. Will you permit me to declare my passion—my love—for my queen, my beauty? To tell you that I have been captivated by the only girl that can under all circumstances make me happy? And can you, my sweet Alice, reciprocate the feeling?"
There was no response from the girl, but her soul was thrilled by an experience new and exciting, and she buried her face in her hands for the moment.
Perhaps there is very little to interest a third party in the initial chapters of a love story; there are to be sure the old fancies that are animated, then its incidents become melodramatic, and then we laugh, and then possibly forget. As Alice raised her eyes to the portrait just above the piano, her face radiant as it were with an indescribable beauty, the enamored judge looked into the lustrous blue eyes and felt that he read within their azure depths, the passion of a beautiful woman's love; and with much confusion he observed,