"This is very foolish of me," thought he, as he rode along the park wall. "I shall find no one up, and they will all think me mad." But at that moment, as he looked over the low wall and up one of the long alleys, he caught a view of two persons crossing the farther extremity of it; and he was instantly satisfied that there were other wakeful people in the world as well as himself. "It is Blanche and her brother," he thought; and, riding up to the court, he flung his bridle to a boy who was standing there, and without farther enquiry hastened into the park. The wood was somewhat labyrinthine; but Beauchamp had observed the direction taken by the figures he had seen, and following one of the cross alleys, he soon entered that wherein he had beheld them, and in which he found that they were still walking slowly on, about a hundred yards before him, unconscious that there was any one in the park but themselves.
As Captain Delaware was speaking eagerly and loud, Beauchamp, to avoid overhearing his conversation with his sister, hastened forward, pronouncing his name, and was almost immediately by their side. He was greeted by both with evident pleasure; but upon Blanche's cheek, though it was much paler than it had been in England, there was still that flickering blush, on which we have already written a long discussion.
After their first meeting was over, and Beauchamp had explained that his sister would be there in about an hour, of course all three, as they took a step or two slowly forward, felt themselves rather awkward. But William Delaware was fond of cutting Gordian knots; and the next moment, after a silent smile as he glanced first at his cousin and then at Blanche, he abruptly let her arm slip from his own, and, looking gaily into Beauchamp's face, he said, "Here, Henry, give Blanche your arm, while I go to tell my father that you are here."
His sister looked at him almost reproachfully, and proposed that they should all return; but Captain Delaware stayed not to listen, and the next moment she stood alone with Henry Beauchamp, with her trembling hand laid upon her lover's arm. Heaven knows what they said, for I am sure I do not; but doubtless it was something very extraordinary, for, ere they had taken two steps forward, Beauchamp woke, and detected Blanche Delaware calling him, "My lord."
"My lord!" he repeated. "My lord! Is such the cold title by which I am alone to be called? Oh, Blanche!"
Blanche found that she had got into a scrape; and as there was but one way of getting out of it in all the world, she took it at once. She paused, and though she was ready to sink where she stood, she raised her long eyelashes, and fixed her beautiful eyes upon her cousin's face for one single moment, with a glance that was worth all the Oriental love-letters that ever were composed--imploring, tender, full of gentleness and affection. It seemed to say, "Do not--do not overpower me--I am yours, heart, and soul, and mind--but my heart is so full, another word will break it."
Beauchamp read it all at once; and pressing her hand in both of his, he asked the very intelligible question, "Is it--is it mine, dear Blanche?"
"If you still wish it, Henry," she replied. "Can I refuse anything to the saviour of my brother's character, and the generous benefactor of our whole family?"
The spirit of perversity seized upon Beauchamp again in a moment; and he was not satisfied. "Nay, Blanche! Nay!" he said. "I must win a dearer assurance than that. I will not owe to gratitude--little as I have deserved it--what I would fain owe to love. No, no--I must have a dearer assurance, or I shall think that the same Blanche Delaware who accepts Henry Beauchamp in France, would again refuse Henry Burrel if--unbacked by some pitiful service--he again stood by the Prior's Fountain."
Beauchamp's exacting mood gave Blanche the advantage; and, by amusing her fancy even for a single instant, got the better of a part of her agitation. She smiled, and was half inclined to triumph, for she felt that she could if she liked; but love was the more powerful motive, and she only misused her advantage by that one playful smile, and a few words like it. "I no more refused him then," she replied, "because he was Henry Burrel, than I now accept him because he is Earl of Ashborough. Do you believe me, Henry?" she asked, after a pause.