"Tell me you love me first."
"I must not love you; you know that."
"But if you might, you could?"
"Ye—es."
"Then I defy all difficulties,—aunts, and friends, and lovers. I shall win you in the teeth of all barriers, and in spite of all opposition. And now go home, my heart's delight, my best beloved. I have this assurance from you, that your own lips have given me, and it makes me confident of victory."
"But if you fail," she begins, nervously; but he will not listen to her.
"There is no such word," he says, gayly. "Or, if there is, I never learnt it. Good-night, my love."
"Good-night." A little frightened by his happy vehemence she stands well away from him, and holds out her hands in farewell. Taking them, he opens them gently and presses an impassioned kiss on each little pink-tinged palm. With a courteous reverence for her evident shyness, he then releases her, and, raising his hat, stands motionless until she has sprung down the bank and so reached the Moyne fields again.
Then she turns and waves him a second and last good night. Returning the salute, he replaces his hat on his head, and thrusting his hands deep in his pockets, turns towards Coole—and dinner. He is somewhat late for the latter, but this troubles him little, so set is his mind upon the girl who has just left him.
Surely she is hard to win, and therefore—how desirable! "The women of Ireland," says an ancient chronicler, "are the coyest, the most coquettish, yet withal the coldest and virtuousest women upon earth." Yet, allowing all this, given time and opportunity, they may be safely wooed. What Mr. Desmond complains of bitterly, in his homeward musings to-night, is the fact that to him neither time nor opportunity is afforded.