"Oh, Theodore, is not this wrong?" she asked, but without attempting to free herself from his embrace.
"Wrong, my Ildica? wrong, my beloved?" he exclaimed: "oh, no! God forbid that I should ever seek to make you do or feel aught that is evil! No, no, dearest, my father's blessing will attend our union; he has promised, he has given it: our dear mother's consent was spoken to him long ago!"
"Indeed!" cried Ildica.
"Yes, indeed," he said, pressing her again closer to his bosom, from which she had partly raised herself as she spoke. "Yes, indeed, Ildica! Joyful did my father's words sound in my ear, as he told me that, if I could win your love, I might hope for your hand. Nothing now is wanting to my happiness but one dear word from my Ildica's sweet lips. Oh, speak it, beloved! Speak it; and say you will be mine." She could not find voice to utter the deep feelings of her heart; but her cheek sunk glowing upon his shoulder, and their lips met in the first dear, long, thrilling kiss of happy and acknowledged love.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE DISASTER.
From a dream of happiness such as mortal beings know but once on this side of the grave--a dream of happiness in which all the brightest, noblest, most joyful feelings of the fresh, unsullied, unexhausted heart of youth burst forth, like the streams of the Nile, from a thousand beautiful sources, Ildica and Theodore woke at length, and prepared to return to the side of her mother, to make her a sharer in their joy, and tell her how blessed, how supremely blessed they felt. Clinging close together in attitudes of tenderness, from which Attic sculptors might have learned yet another grace, they rose and moved along the portico. They moved, however, but slowly, lingering still for some fond word, some affectionate caress, or pausing in the scene, hallowed for ever in their eyes by the first spoken words of love, to gaze over it again and again between the colossal pillars of the portico. Over that scene, however, had by this time come a change--one of those sudden, inexplicable alterations not uncommon in southern climates. The moon, which by this time had wandered on far enough to warn them that the crowded moments had flown quickly away, was still hanging over the Adriatic, and pouring forth that glorious flood of light which makes the stars all "veil their ineffectual fires;" but the sky was no longer without clouds, and catching the light upon their rounded but not fleecy edges, the large heavy masses of electric vapour swept slow over the lower part of the sky, between the bright orb and the islands that slept beneath her beams. Theodore and Ildica paused to mark them, as slowly contorting itself into hard and struggling forms, one particular mass lay writhing upon the horizon, like some giant Titan wrestling with agony on his bed of torture. At the same time the breeze, which was balmy, though calm, during the evening, became oppressively hot, with a faint phosphoric smell in the air, and a deep silence seemed to spread over the whole world. The cigala was still, the voices on the shore had ceased, the merry laugh no longer resounded from the open cottage door, and the nightingale, which had prolonged her song after all the rest was silent, ceased also, and left a solemn hush over the whole universe.
"What strange forms that cloud is taking," said Theodore, called even from the thoughts of his own happiness by the sudden alteration of the scene: "and how quiet everything is. Doubtless, there will be a storm to-night. Alas! for those who are upon the treacherous sea."
"But your father," said Ildica; "he goes by land, Theodore. Is it not so?"
"Not so, dearest," replied Theodore; "he visits first Antioch, and then proceeds by land; but it is not for him I fear, as I heard of his landing while I was on the journey hither; but those strange clouds and the heat of the air must surely augur thunder to-night; and I saw a whole fleet of boats this morning at Tragurium, ready to put to sea."