"What!" cry I, when I recover breath, moving back a step or two, and staring at him with the most open and undisguised amazement. Can I have heard aright? Is it indeed me he is asking to marry him? And if so—if my senses have not deceived me—who is to tell Dora. This thought surmounts all others.
"I want you to say you will marry me," repeats he, rather disconcerted by the emphatic astonishment of my look and tone. As I make no reply this time, he is emboldened, and, advancing, takes both my hands.
"Why do you look so surprised?" he says. "Why will you not answer me? Surely for weeks you must have seen I would some time ask you this question. Then why not to-day? If I waited for years I could not love you more utterly, more madly, if you like, than now. And you, Phyllis—say you will be my wife."
"I cannot indeed," I reply, earnestly; "it is out of the question. I never knew you—you cared for me in this way—I always thought—that is, we all thought—you—-"
"Yes?"
"We were all quite sure—I mean none of us imagined you were in love with me."
"With whom, then?—with Dora?"
"Well"—nervously—"I am sure mamma and papa thought so, and so did I."
"What an absurd mistake! Ten thousand Doras would not make one Phyllis. Do you know, ever since that first day I saw you in the wood I loved you? Do you remember it?"
"Yes," I say, blushing furiously. "I was hanging from the nut tree and nearly went mad with shame and rage when I found I could not escape. It puzzles me to think what you could have seen to admire about me that day, unless my boots." I laugh rather hysterically.