"Yes; but you hardly know me. We must be at least engaged long enough to make each other's acquaintance. I shall want to hear all your past life; you will want to hear all mine——"
"Your past life is written in your face, dear. All I want to read is there."
"But there are things which you must hear—things which may anger and surprise you, and even make you cease to love me."
He held her from him at arm's length while he scanned her face intently.
"There is only one thing I care to know," he said. "Has any man ever kissed your lips before?"
"Never!"
"There," he cried triumphantly, folding her in his arms again and covering her cheeks and lips and eyes with quick kisses—"that is all I want to know and all I will listen to! Come outside now and skate, or we shall deeply wound the feelings of the men who have been all the morning clearing the ice from show. Let me help you to put on your hat. If you look up at me under the brim like that I shall never let you get outside, but shall spend the entire afternoon kissing you! Your lips are as soft as a rose-leaf, and you have been allowed to grow to twenty without being forcibly carried off and married, whether you consented or not! Waiting for me, my dear, beautiful Lina? One last kiss before we leave the conservatory, and one more on that enchanting little pink ear, and one more still on the soft cream-coloured space behind your ear, where the gold-brown hair grows! Here we are at the conservatory door. A moment more, and I sha'n't be able to kiss you. Just stop long enough to tell me that you love me. No more 'Mr. Armstrong;' call me by my second name, as my uncle does—'Lorin.' My name is Wallace Lorin Armstrong. Now say that you love me and are glad to be my wife."
Tears were in her eyes as she obeyed him—tears of intense happiness after long years of loneliness and separation.
"I love you, Lorin dear," she murmured, in tender, trembling tones; "and I am glad with all my heart and soul to be your wife!"