"That we could not," says she, so promptly that it struck me she had been expecting some such suggestion from me. Her blushes were adorable, it is true, but I believe they were more a matter of instinct than the offspring of any particular commotion in her bosom.
"Wilt marry me, pretty one," says I, "at the first church we come to, that hath a snug parsonage sitting in honeysuckle beside it?"
"Ay, that I will," says she, cocking up her thin with an archness of invitation that was not to be denied.
I suppose it was that the adventures we had already had together had given us the most perfect understanding of one another. There was a feeling of proprietorship between us; and had not each given up everything in life for the other's sake?
"My dear," says I, feeling that a little sentiment would not come amiss this rare spring morning, "I hope you have realized what I have to offer you. I have but my blasted reputation, my destitute condition, my debts, my crimes, my prostituted name. This is all the estate that a very humble, constant heart is endowed with."
"They will serve," says Cynthia simply. "If you were the wickedest man in England, and by your own account you are not far removed from that state, it would be the same. It is not for what you be that I like you; it is for what I think you to be."
"If it comes to that," says I, "I don't suppose it is me at all you care for. It is not myself you are in love with, nor my virtues, nor my vices, nor my hair, my eyes, my clothes, my understanding, nor anything that is mine. You are at that romantical instant of your womanhood when you have fallen in love with the name of love. If instead of a man I were a tame white mouse, or a bob-tailed rabbit, or a bull-calf you would invest me with all the pretty fancies that are running in your head, so that the reflection in your mind would yet be the one that you most wished to see. But a truce to philosophy, let us to church."
Cynthia was so evidently of my mind in this last particular that she laughed, and resumed the singing of her ballad, as we strode out the brisker for our intercourse.