Natalie looked calmly into her eyes; the truth flashed across her mind at once, and she was about to clasp her in her arms, calling her by the name of sister, when a well-known voice from behind them repeated the name, "Sea-flower," and Mr. Delwood was by her side.
"Where did you learn the name by which I am called in my island home?" asked Natalie.
"Why did you never tell us that you have a name in keeping with your character?" he asked, taking the seat by her side which Winnie, who had retired to hide her blushes, had vacated.
"'Tis the name by which my father loved to call me, and I associate it with his sacred memory," she replied; and a tear, which Delwood looked upon as also sacred, fell upon the hand which clasped her's as with reverential fervency.
"Your brother told me of the name," he replied, "and will you permit me to associate with that name all that is of purity? May I not call you by that name? Can you give one thought to him whose very happiness for life is dependent on you?"
There was a pause, Delwood had never until this night, declared to her his love, in so many measured words, which were but coldness in comparison with the love for her which filled his soul. A year ago would have sealed his doom, but that night witnessed another scene. Death had claimed it for his own. The hand which he held was not withdrawn, neither did a simper mark her reply. With eyes meekly turned upward, she answered in a calm, low voice,--"My dear father is in heaven; if he is looking down, I feel that he will smile upon me, when, with my mother's consent, she shall give me away to you. I have long ago given myself to Christ, and if you recognize him as your Saviour, we will together serve him as dutiful children, praying one for the other that we may not fall."
"I am not like you," he replied; "I can never be as pure as you are; neither am I what the world calls a Christian; but by God's help, I pledge myself to be one of Christ's followers; and of one thing I am confident, I shall never be if I grope my way alone through the world, as I must if I lose you, what I shall be if I have you for a guide!"
"It is enough; you depreciate your own merits," she said, glancing proudly upon him; "go, when I return, and with your own lips ask my mother, if she can find a place in her noblest of women's hearts, for him who is all too worthy of her daughter's love."
He folded her to his heart, and the rich harvest moon had sunk far below the horizon, ere these two kindred spirits had wearied of the glorious night.
Mr. Santon had not felt the utter desolation, after the first overpowering sense of grief had passed, after his wife's death, that he would have felt had he had no one upon whom to have leaned. As it was, his home was not desolate, for he cherished his daughter as the "apple of his eye," and he had come to be like himself again. Happy faces met him as he came in wearied from his duties "on 'change," and he had again assumed his easy, jocose manners. Natalie was still continuing her studies, making unprecedented progress, to the rapturous delight of the Signor; while Winnie enlivened the whole household.