Mary was besides one of the most seductive little confidantes in the world. She was so pure from all selfism, so heartily and innocently interested in what another was telling her, that people in talking with her found the subject constantly increasing in interest; although if they had really been called upon afterwards to state the exact portion in words which she added to the conversation, they would have been surprised to find it so small.
In fact, before Cerinthy Ann had quite finished her confessions, they were more than a mile from the cottage, and Mary began to think of returning, saying that her mother would wonder where she was when she came home.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The sun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and lilac tints, and savins and junipers, had a painter been required to represent them, would have been found not without a suffusion of the same tints. Through the tremulous rosy sea of the upper air, the silver full moon looked out like some calm superior presence which waits only for the flush of a temporary excitement to die away, to make its tranquillizing influence felt.
Mary, as she walked homeward with this dreamy light about her, moved with a slower step than when borne along by the vigorous arm and determined motion of her young friend.
It is said that a musical sound, uttered with decision by one instrument, always makes vibrate the corresponding chord of another, and Mary felt, as she left her positive but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive vibration of something in her own self of which she was conscious her calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one of those reveries which she thought she had for ever forbidden to herself, and there arose before her mind, like a picture, the idea of a marriage ceremony; but the eyes of the bridegroom were dark, and his curls were clustering in raven ringlets, and her hand throbbed in his as it had never throbbed in any other.
It was just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her, and some one said ‘Mary!’ It was spoken in a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion, and she turned and saw those very eyes!—that very hair!—yes, and the cold little hand throbbed with that very throb in that strong, living, manly hand, and ‘whether in the body or out of the body’ she knew not; she felt herself borne in those arms, and words that spoke themselves in her inner heart—words profaned by being repeated, were on her ear.
‘Oh, is this a dream!—is it a dream! James, are we in heaven? Oh, I have lived through such an agony—I have been so worn out! Oh, I thought you never would come!’ And then the eyes closed, and heaven and earth faded away together in a trance of blissful rest.