She turned to him, her face very pale and wet with tears, but calmness and heroic determination in her eyes.
“Lord Alwyn,” she said. Then she noticed the pain the words gave him. “Claude, then,” she continued, “I will never marry you without the consent of your mother. That consent will not be given. So I will never marry you—never.”
There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart.
“Then,” he said, “you do not, you cannot lo—”
“Stay!” she interrupted; “stay, Claude, stay!” She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. “I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet.”
The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time—spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now.
“Sit down, dear Meta,” he said at last; “we still are lovers.”
“Yes,” in a low, sad voice.
“Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, ‘Till frozen seas do meet’?”
“There is a legend,” she replied, “that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. I do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that ships would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then the frozen seas would meet, and this world would be all one shining ball of ice-clad snow. But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt—the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,”—here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream—“and I will love you, Claude, till frozen seas do meet.”