I will not dwell upon what passed between them. Many important things were proposed, discussed, and settled; much was to be told, explained, and listened to; yet nothing was settled, and very little discussed. Marvellous how the time ran on in the words of love and the feeling of happiness! They forgot the future in the present; and they were just approaching the very object of their meeting, when the old housekeeper quietly opened the door and told them it was time to part. Then came the hurried and whispered engagement to meet again on the following morning, with a pledge to each other to act more wisely and providently, and use their time to better purposes.
Thus they parted; and Emmeline, agitated and confused with the inebriating taste of early love, returned to her chamber to dream dreams of happiness. Her head had rested on his bosom; his arms had clasped her to his heart; his lips had been placed on hers. It was all for the first time; and that first time works an eventful change in woman's heart.
They met again upon the following day; and, though strongly tempted as they had been before, they were wise and remembered that much had to be determined. Neither upon this conversation will I dwell any more than upon that which preceded. The reader can easily imagine what were the feelings of a young, innocent, inexperienced girl, when a proposal was placed before her to quit the dwelling in which she had been brought up--to leave the protection to which she had been accustomed--and to go in silence and in secresy to a distant land with one whom she loved dearly, but had not long known. She doubted him not; she trusted him entirely; she felt sure that he would take no base advantage of her confidence; she believed him fully when he told her that she should be to him as a sister till she became a bride; but yet her heart sank and her limbs trembled; and it was with difficulty that her lips could be brought to utter the promise.
Smeaton took every pains to reassure and comfort her. Perhaps the first might seem a strange way; but yet it was a very effectual one. According to a custom which he had seen in other lands, he bound her to himself, and himself to her, by a simple form of betrothal. With her hand in his, he pledged himself to her for ever, and made her repeat the same promise towards him; then they mutually called upon God to bless them as they kept that vow; and then he placed a small jewelled ring upon her finger--an ancient gem of his house--and after leaving it there for a moment, and pressing a kiss upon the hand that bore it, he told her to fasten it round her neck with a ribbon, and keep it always in her bosom.
Still, however, he found her agitated, perhaps I may say alarmed; but then he whispered a few words in her ear, and all irresolution was at an end. Emmeline's bright eyes grew brighter as they fixed upon his face with a look not fuller of surprise than of joy; and, clasping her hands together, she said--
"Then I go safely, rightly. It is a duty. I no longer fear."
"You shall have the paper to-morrow," said Smeaton; "but as soon as you have read it, it had better be destroyed. I have kept it concealed where nobody could find it, even when my baggage was searched in London; but now, in justice to you, my beloved, I must show it, that you may feel yourself justified in all that you do."
Again they were forced to part. Little more remained to be settled, and that they thought would easily be done. The hour, the manner, the means of flight, were to be arranged; but flight was determined, and they parted happily.
When Emmeline was in the solitude of her own chamber, however, and when all she had promised, all she was about to perform, came upon her mind like a dream--she was moved deeply. Dangers, difficulties, she thought of little; but the strange newness of all that was before her alarmed and agitated her. The very thought of quitting the wild lonely scenes round Ale, quitting them perhaps for ever, produced a very melancholy impression on her mind. There was not a rock or hill, a towering cliff, an indentation of the coast--hardly a tree all around--that she did not know as a familiar friend. They had been the companions of her youth and of her infancy; she had held more communings with them than with human beings; she had peopled them with her thoughts; they had linked themselves to her heart by the strong ties of association; they had been as brothers and sisters to her in the solitude of her own meditations; and, in the absence of other objects of affection, she had clung to them as if they had been living things. Love must be very powerful, to break through all such bonds, and to make the heart yield up, with no other portion of regret than a passing melancholy, all that we have attached ourselves to for many years. Emmeline was going to quit them all, as she thought--to quit them all in a few days, and it was not to be expected that she should do so without some grief; but love had by this time the full mastery, and she did not and would not repent of the promise she had given. Its fulfilment, however, was far more distant than she anticipated; and, before nightfall of that same day, the relation of almost all things round her had been changed.