“Oh, Mr. Gernon, is this you? Your servant, sir! (courtesying half-coquettishly); who would have expected to meet you here all alone, and so solemnly musing?”
“Is there any thing more extraordinary in it, Miss Olivia,” said I, “than to find you also alone, and enjoying your intellectual repast, ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs?’ The Chinese, I believe, think that human hearts are united from birth by unseen silken cords, which contracting slowly but surely, bring them together at last. What think you, Olivia?” I continued (we grow familiar generally on the eve of a declaration), “may not some such invisible means of attraction have brought us together at this moment?”
Olivia looked down, her pretty little foot being busily engaged in investigating the character of a pebble, or something of the sort, that lay on the walk, and indistinctly replied, that she had really never much considered such weighty and mysterious subjects, but that it might be even so. Encouraged by this reply, yet trembling at the thought of my own audacity (bullets whizzing past me since have not produced half the trepidation), I placed myself near her, and gently taking the little, soft, white hand which listlessly, but invitingly, hung by her side, I said (I was sorely puzzled what to say),
“I—I—was delighted, dear Olivia, to find you a visitor here on my arrival the other day.”
“Were you, Mr. Gernon,” said the lively girl, turning upon me her soft blue eyes, in a manner which brought on a fresh attack of delirium tremens; “‘delighted’ is a strong term, but Mr. Gernon, I know, is rather fond of such, little heeding their full import.”
“Strong!” I replied, instantly falling into heroics; “it but feebly expresses the pleasure I feel on seeing you. Oh, dearest Olivia,” I continued, all the barriers of reserve giving way at once before the high tide of my feelings, “it is in vain longer to dissemble” (here I gently passed my other unoccupied arm round her slender waist); “I love you with the fondest affection. Deign to say that I possess an interest in your heart.”
A slight and almost imperceptible increase of pressure from the little hand locked in mine, and a timid look from the generally lively but now subdued and abashed girl, was the silent but expressive answer I received. It was enough, for a griff, at least. I drew her closer to my side—she slowly averted her head; mine followed its movement. The vertebral column had reached its rotary limit—so that there was a sort of surrender at discretion—and I imprinted a long and fervent kiss on the soft and downy cheek of Olivia. Oh, blissful climax of a thousand sweet emotions; too exquisite to endure, too precious for fate to accord more than once in an existence—the first innocent kiss of requited affection—how can I ever forget ye?
Let raptured fancy on that moment dwell,
When my fond vows in trembling accents fell;
When love acknowledged woke the trembling sigh,