Arrah Neil was silent for a moment--only a moment; but she did nothing like any one else; and once more raising her eyes to his face, she laid her soft hand on his and asked, "Whom have I ever loved but you?" and then the tears rolled over the long lashes and diamonded her cheek.
Charles Walton had felt in those few brief moments as he had never felt before--as he had never imagined that he could feel. He, the calm, the firm, the strong-minded, had felt timid as a child before the cottage-girl, the object of his long bounty, the partaker of his house's charity; and he knew from that strange sensation how powerful was the love within him; while she, though agitated, though moved, gained from the very pure singleness of the one strong passion which had dwelt in her breast for years, that strength to avow it which he seemed scarcely able to command.
But that avowal, once made on her part--though he knew it, though he could not doubt it before--at once restored him to himself again; and casting his arms round her, he called her his own dear bride.
A few minutes passed in sweet emotions--in words so broken and confused that they would seem nonsense if here written--in signs and tokens of the heart which form a sacred language that ought not to be transcribed. But then Charles Walton spoke of his sister's approaching marriage, and urged that she whom he loved would that day put the seal upon their fate also.
Arrah turned pale and shook her head; and when her lover, with soothing words and kind assurances, sought to remove what he believed to be the mere timid scruples of a young heart to so hasty a marriage, she answered--
"No, Charles, no! It is not that. I would not so ill repay your generous kindness; I would not so badly return my benefactor's love. But I cannot--no, I cannot--I ought not--nay, I dare not unite my fate with yours till all doubt is removed of who and what I am. Oh, Charles! I love you deeply. You know it--you must have seen it; but yet, in truth and deep sincerity, I tell you that, even if you had condescended to wed the poor, wild peasant girl, as you knew her long ago, Arrah Neil had too much love for Charles Walton to let him so degrade himself. No; as your equal by birth, however much inferior in mind and every other quality, I am yours when you will. I will not say a word: I will not plead even for a day's delay; but there must be no doubt--it must be all proved."
"My dearest Arrah," replied her lover, tenderly, "I have no doubt. All is clear--all is proved to me."
"But not to the world, Charles--not to the world," she answered. "You have yourself admitted it; and you must not, indeed you must not urge me, if you would not make me unhappy--unhappy either to refuse aught that you ask or to do that which I think wrong."
Still he would have persuaded, but she gazed at him reproachfully, saying, "Oh, Charles, forbear!" and he felt her heart beat violently beneath his arm.
"Well, then, Arrah," he said in a somewhat mournful tone, "remember, my beloved, you have promised that whenever these papers can be found--and I trust that will be soon--or that your birth be by any other means clearly established, you will be mine without delay."