All silent sentences, but as the last was thought Claude raised her eyes to her companion, to meet his fixed upon hers, so full of tender, reverent love that she dropped her own, and fell a-trembling with a joy she tried vainly to crush down, while her heart beat heavily the old, old theme,—
“He loves me well—he loves me well.”
They had known each other since they were boy and girl, and the affection had slowly and steadily grown stronger and stronger, but Chris Lisle had said to himself time after time that it was too soon to tell her his love, and ask for the guardianship of her heart; and he had waited, feeling satisfied that some day Claude Gartram would be his.
“There,” he said playfully, “now for lesson the first. Let me draw out some more line. That’s the way. Now, you know as well as I do how to throw. Try to let your fly fall amongst that foam below where the water rushes into the pool. That’s the way. Bravo!”
“There, Mr Lisle,” cried Claude, after making a very fair cast, “now take the rod, for I must go. Mary, dear, come along.”
“Sha’n’t,” said Mary to herself, as she grew more deaf than ever. “Gather your rosebuds while you may, dear. He’s a nice, good fellow. Ah! how I could have loved a man like that.”
“Mary Dillon is too much interested in her book,” said Chris. “There, that’s plenty of line for a good cast. You must go on now. It isn’t so very wicked, Claude.”
“There, then, this one throw and I must go,” said the girl, her cheeks burning, and her head seeming to swim, for she was conscious of nothing—running river, the foam and swirl, the glorious landscape of rugged glen side, and the bright sun gilding the heathery earth upon which she stood—conscious of nothing save the fact that Chris Lisle was by her, and that his words seemed to thrill her to the heart, while in spite of herself he seemed to have acquired a mastery over her which it was sweet to obey.
“Well back,” he cried; “now then, a good one.”
It was not a good cast, being a very clumsy one, for the fly fell with a splash right out in a smooth, oily looking patch of water behind some stones. But, as is often the case, the tyro is more successful than the tried fisherman. The fly had no sooner touched the water than there was a rise, a singing whirr from the winch, and Chris shouted aloud with joy.