They walked on in silence, and she leaned more heavily upon his arm. Twice their eyes met, and as Netta’s fell before those of her companion it was not until they had told the sweet, pure love of her young heart. They were no fiery, rapturous glances—no looks of passionate ecstasy; but the soft, beaming maiden love of an innocent, trusting girl, whose young heart was opening, like a flower, to offer its fragrant sweets to the man who had first spoken gentle words to her—words that had seemed to her, who had not had girlhood’s joys, like the words of love. And that young heart had opened under the influence, like the scented rosebud in the sun; but there was a fatal canker there, and as the flower bloomed, the withering was at hand.
“Let us stop here,” cried Netta, drinking in the beauty of the scene; “it is like being young again, when we were so happy—when mamma watched for papa’s coming, and there seemed no trouble in life. Oh, it has been a cruel time!”
She shuddered, and clung to the arm which supported her.
“This is very wrong of me,” she said, looking up, and smiling the next moment. “I ought not to talk of the past like that.”
“Shall we sit down here?” he said, pointing to a fallen tree trunk.
Then, with the low hum of the insects round them, they entered the edge of the wood.
He sat looking at her in silence for a few moments, and twice her eyes were raised to his with so appealing and tender a look that he felt unmanned. He had brought her there to tell her something, and her love disarmed him; so that he snatched at a chance to put off that which he wished to say.
“You were telling me of the happy past,” he said. “Your were well off once?”
“Yes, and so happy,” said the girl, her eyes filling with tears. “I ought not, perhaps, to tell you, though.”
“You may trust me, Netta,” he said, taking her hand.