“Perfectly, Rosemary. Do you think I would jest with you on such a subject?”
“No! but I thought you knew me so well that you would know without asking that I would love dearly to walk and talk with you every day all our lives long, if we could! But how could we? Some of these days I shall go back to Maryland, and then we shall part and never meet again! Oh! I hate to think that we shall never meet again. You do seem so near to me! So very near to me! As if you were my own, my very own! Oh, sir! I beg your pardon! that was very presumptuous! I ought to have said—I ought to have said——” She stopped and reddened.
“What, my child? You have said nothing wrong or untrue. What do you think you ought to have said?” the earl inquired, in a caressing tone.
“I think I should have said, that I feel so near to you—that I feel as if I were your own, your very own! It was too, too arrogant in me to say that I feel as you belonged to me. I should have said, as if I belonged to you,” she explained. And then she laughed a little, as in ridicule of her own little ridiculous self.
His hand tightened on hers as he replied:
“Suppose we compromise the question and say that we belong to each other?”
“Yes, that is it! And you are so good.”
“And you really wish that we two should walk and talk together every day for the rest of our lives?”
“Oh, yes; if it could be so!”
“Rosemary,” he said, very gravely, as he still held and pressed her hand, “there is but one way in which it could be so.”