‘Susan, am I too old?’ says he.
Susan turns her startled eyes upon him, grows crimson, and then deadly white. She pulls her hands out of his and turns away, but too late—too late to hide the rapture in her eyes, that the heavy tears in vain are trying to drown.
‘Susan, my darling! my own sweet little girl! Susan’—his arms are round her now—‘is it true? So you do care for me! For me—such an old fellow next to you—you’—clasping her to him and laughing—‘are only a baby, you know. But my baby now, eh? Oh, Susan, is it true?’
Susan tightens her hand upon his arm, but answer makes she none.
‘Afterwards you may be sorry; thirty-four and nineteen—a great many milestones between us, you see.’
‘Ah, it is you who will be sorry!’ says Susan, lifting her head a minute from the safe shelter of his breast to look at him. It is a lovely look. Poor James! if he had only seen it!
‘Are you going to lead me such a life as that?’ says Crosby, laughing. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t, indeed. I don’t even know if you love me yet.’
‘Oh, as for that——’ Suddenly she laughs, too, and with the sweetest tenderness slips one arm round his neck and draws his head down to hers. ‘And, besides, I’m very nearly twenty,’ says she.