Craven adjusted and secured the saddle with great care, patted and soothed the pony and then, approaching Capitola in the most deferential manner, stood before her and said: "Miss Black, you will pardon me, I hope, if I tell you that the peril I had imagined you to be in has so agitated my mind as to make it impossible for me longer to withhold a declaration of my sentiments—" Here his voice, that had trembled throughout this disclosure, now really and utterly failed him.
Capitola looked up with surprise and interest; she had never in her life before heard an explicit declaration of love from anybody. She and Herbert somehow had always understood each other very well, without ever a word of technical love-making passing between them; so Capitola did not exactly know what was coming next.
Craven recovered his voice, and encouraged by the favorable manner in which she appeared to listen to him, actually threw himself at her feet and, seizing one of her hands, with much ardor and earnestness and much more eloquence than any one would have credited him with, poured forth the history of his passion and his hopes.
"Well, I declare!" said Cap, when he had finished his speech and was waiting in breathless impatience for her answer; "this is what is called a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, is it? It is downright sentimental, I suppose, if I had only sense enough to appreciate it! It is as good as a play; pity it is lost upon me!"
"Cruel girl! how you mock me!" cried Craven, rising from his knees and sitting beside her.
"No, I don't; I'm in solemn earnest. I say it is first rate. Do it again; I like it!"
"Sarcastic and merciless one, you glory in the pain you give! But if you wish again to hear me say I love you, I will say it a dozen—yes, a hundred—times over if you will only admit that you could love me a little in return."
"Don't; that would be tiresome; two or three times is quite enough. Besides, what earthly good could my saying 'I love you' do?"
"It might persuade you to become the wife of one who will adore you to the last hour of his life."
"Meaning you?"