But at that the girl seemed suddenly to lose her self-possession for the first time.
‘Oh! Fred,’ she cried, ‘what am I doing? Oh! do stop and let me out before it is too late! I was mad to come! It is too wicked! My people will never forgive me,’ and she struggled to loose herself from his detaining clasp.
‘Jenny, my dearest,’ he exclaimed, ‘be reasonable, for my sake, do! It is too late to go back now. I have made every arrangement for our staying at the Castle Warden Hotel. Besides, would you disappoint me in so terrible a manner, after having passed your plighted word to be my wife? I am sure you won’t! What should I do without you, Jenny? What would you do without me? If we part now, it must be for ever! Don’t make both our lives unhappy for a little want of courage.’
‘No, no, I must go on, I feel it! I cannot live without you, Fred. I love you too dearly! Do just as you will with me!’
‘I had a little difficulty with the licence business yesterday,’ he whispered, as they travelled onwards; ‘they wanted to have the written consent of your guardians, or my assurance that you were of age, so I swore you were. It was the only way out of it, my darling, and quite justifiable, in my eyes, under the circumstances; but I thought I would put you on your guard in case the registrar put any awkward questions to you concerning it.’
‘It doesn’t signify,’ replied the girl in a dejected tone. Now that the goal of her desires was so nearly reached, her high spirits seemed all to have evaporated, and she was trembling and nervous. ‘I have had to tell so many lies to manage the business, that one more or less cannot make much difference.’
‘Jenny, my own girl, what has come over you?’ asked Walcheren in some alarm. ‘Are you not well? Do you not love me as much as you thought you did? Your mood is not complimentary, dearest, to the coming ceremony. If you really repent the step you have taken, say so, and at all costs, if it breaks my heart, I will get out of the cab and you shall return to Madame Costello’s. Jenny, do you no longer wish to be my wife?’
But, at that awful alternative, Jenny’s sudden weakness evaporated and she clung to her lover, as if all her hopes in this world and the next centred in him.
‘Yes! yes! yes!’ she exclaimed eagerly, ‘you are my life—my all. I cannot live without you, or away from you. It is only a sudden fear of the consequences of this step we are taking which terrified me. It is gone now, dear Frederick, indeed it has. What fear could I have in becoming your wife. You, whom I love beyond all other things. Only, my poor parents, my poor, good mother, Fred. How I wish she had said, “God bless you, Jenny,” as we parted. She has been such a kind mother to me, and she will miss me so. She will have nothing to occupy her thoughts, or her hands, poor mother, now I am gone. Do you think I shall ever see them again, Fred?—my parents, and poor old Aunt Clem. Do you think my father will keep them from me all my life?’
She spoke so rapidly and excitedly, and she clung to him so tightly, that Frederick Walcheren feared she was what the lower orders call ‘going off her head,’ and said all he could think of to soothe her.