Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"
"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.
"What hour?—hour to name that boat?"
"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you."
"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn—if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.
"What was it you told him?"
"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."
"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart.
"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on the Votaress——"
"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting.