“Insolent!” exclaimed Miss Peyton, raising her eyes for the first time during Leicester’s address, and looking him full in the face. “So far from encouraging him, I have never spoken to him save to turn his pompous speeches into ridicule since I was first introduced to him.”
“So I would fain have taught myself to believe yesterday,” resumed Leicester; “but the coldness of your manner towards me, and the marked attention you allowed him to pay you during the evening, tortured me with doubts, and when, after an animated conversation in the music-room, I saw him raise your hand to his lips, I imagined he had put his design into execution, and was an accepted suitor.”
“A rejected one would have been nearer the mark,” murmured Miss Peyton.
“Utterly miserable,” continued Leicester, “at the idea of having irrevocably lost you—provoked that you should have accepted a man so completely your inferior in mind, and, indeed, in every particular, I ordered post-horses before I retired for the night, and but for this accidental meeting should have been already on my road to London. And now,” he continued with passionate eagerness, “it is for you to decide whether my future life is to be happy or miserable. If truth has any power of revealing itself, you will believe that I love you deeply, tenderly, for yourself alone; and you will decide whether such an affection is calculated to ensure your happiness; but if you are unable to credit my sincerity, only say the word, and I leave you for ever.”
He ceased, and clenching his hands in the excess of his emotion till the nails appeared to grow into the flesh, stood before her, pale and agitated, like a criminal awaiting the sentence which shall send him forth a free man or consign him to a felon’s grave. After watching her anxiously for a few moments, during which she remained without speaking, her head averted and her features concealed by her close straw bonnet, he resumed: “I see it is in vain to wait; your silence tells me that I have nothing to hope—fool that I was ever to deem it could be otherwise! Farewell, Laura; may you be as happy as I would have striven to render you.”
He turned, and his hand was again on the lock of the door, when a low, sweet voice, every accent of which thrilled through his very soul, murmured—
“Mr. Leicester—Charles—do not go—you will not leave me?”
And accordingly he did not go, but came back instantly like an amiable, obedient young man as he was, and received the reward of merit by learning from the lips of her he loved that she was not only convinced of the sincerity of the affection he had bestowed on her, but prized the gift so highly that she felt obliged to return it, which statement sounded very like a contradiction, but was nothing of the kind. Then followed a bright, happy half-hour, one of those little bits of unmitigated sunshine which gleam once or twice in a lifetime to thaw the ice that tears which have never found vent form more or less thickly around the heart of each of us; and ere it was over, Laura Peyton stood pledged to become the wife of Charley Leicester, who dis-ordered the post-horses and postponed his journey to Constantinople ad infinitum.
Several droll little scenes occurred later on that morning between various members of the party assembled at Broadhurst. In the first place, Annie Grant, who, completely tired out, and greatly concerned at the mysterious impediments which obstructed the course of her cousin Charles’s love affair, had sought her pillow with a firm conviction she should never close her eyes all night, fell asleep immediately, and woke soon after nine o’clock on the following morning under the impression that she had just gone to bed. While she was dressing she resolved in her anxious mind her cousin’s difficulties, and came to the following conclusions: first, that for sundry reasons connected with his natural indolence and a painful sense of his dependent position, Charley would never “tell his love;” secondly, that Laura, not divining these reasons, was piqued and hurt at his prolonged silence; and thirdly, that it behoved her (Annie) to remove these stumbling-blocks by a little judicious interference. Accordingly, when she had finished her toilet, and, giving a last parting glance at her pretty face and graceful figure in the cheval glass in her dressing-room, had thought—well, I don’t know that we’ve any business to pry into her thoughts, but by the bright half-smile, half-blush which resulted from the inspection it may be concluded they were of an agreeable nature. When she had performed this little unconscious act of homage to her own beauty she tripped off to her friend’s room, and found that young lady fastening a very dangerous little bow of ribbon around her neck, with a small turquoise brooch made in the shape of a true lover’s knot. I wonder why she should have selected it from some twenty others on that morning in particular?
“Idle girl!” exclaimed Annie, kissing her affectionately, as if idleness were a highly commendable quality, “idle girl! not dressed at ten o’clock, and I’ve been ready for the last five minutes.”