"I cannot," he whispers, huskily, "I have been too long living in the other belief. To hope again, only to be cast down, would be my death. I do not dare imagine it possible you love me."
"But I do! I do!" I sob, piteously, flinging my arms around his neck. "I always, always liked you better than any one else, but during these past few months I have learned to love you so well that I cannot be happy without you. When I heard you say this evening you intended leaving me again, I thought my heart would have broken."
Turning up my face so that the full glare of the lamp falls upon it, Marmaduke gazes at me as though he would read the innermost workings of my heart.
"Is this the truth?" he asks. "Are you sure you are not deceiving yourself and me?"
"Must I say it again? Can you not see by me how it is?" I answer, still crying: I am a perfect Niobe by this time, and am dismally conscious that the tip of my nose is degenerating into a warm pink. "I am sure I am unhappy enough for anything."
Not noticing the rather ungracious tendency of this last remark, 'Duke draws me closer to him, and, stooping his head, presses his cheek to my wet one.
"My love! my life!" he whispers, and holds me as though he never meant again to let me go.
We are quite silent for a few minutes—during which a great content, such as I have never before know creeps into my heart. Then 'Duke, with a long, happy sigh, partly releases me. His eyelashes I can see are wet with tears, but there is the very sweetest and tenderest smile upon his lips. "I have not waited in vain," he says. "At last I can call you mine; at last: and just when I had given up all hope—darling—darling!"
It is half an hour later, and we are now thoroughly comfortable, full of rest and quiet joy.
We are sitting before the library fire, I on a low stool, with my head leaning against 'Duke's knee, he with one hand round my neck, while with the other he every now and then ruffles, or, as he fondly believes, smoothes, my "nut-brown locks." For the last three or four minutes no words have passed between us. I think we are too happy to give way to the mere expression of our feelings.