“To be what?” she asked, not dreaming of my drift.
“To be married to me, Estelle!”
The expressions that flitted over her face,—expressions of doubtful rapture, pettish incredulity, and childlike eagerness,—come back vividly to my remembrance.
“You do not mean it!” at length she murmured, reproachfully.
“From my inmost heart I mean it, and I desire it above all earthly desires,” I replied.
She sank to the floor, and, clasping my knees with her arms, bowed her head upon them, and wept. Then, starting up, she said: “What! Your wife? Really your wife? Mistress and wife in one? Me,—a slave? Can it be, William, you desire it?”
It was the first time she had called me by my first name.
“Have you considered it well?” she continued. “O, I fear it would be ungenerous in me to consent. Such an alliance might jeopard all your future. You are young, well-connected, and can one day command all that the best society of the country can offer. No, William, not for me,—not for me the position of your wife!”
I replied to these misgivings by putting on her shawl, then her bonnet, the tying of which I accompanied with a kiss that brought the roses to her cheeks.
“Estelle,” I said, “unless we are very different from what we believe, the step is one we shall not regret. I must be degenerate indeed, if I can ever find anything in life more precious than the love you give and inspire. But perhaps you shrink from so binding a tie.”