'Do not forget yourself, Captain Colville, and that you are engaged to Miss Galloway.'
'Engaged—to—Miss Galloway!' be repeated, with genuine surprise and annoyance. 'Not at all. Who on earth put that into your little head?' he added, with a laugh.
'Mrs. Wodrow always told me so,' replied Mary, covered with confusion, but feeling very happy nevertheless.
'Silly, gossiping old woman! No, Miss Wellwood: I am, thank Heaven, a free man—as yet.'
Here was a revelation—if true.
He was gazing on her now with eyes that were full of admiration and ardour, while the clasp of his hand seemed to infuse through her veins some of the force and love that inspired him. In the glance they exchanged each read the other's secret, and he drew her towards him and kissed her. 'There are moments in life,' it is said, 'when joy makes us afraid: and this was one'—to Mary at least, and she shrank back—all the more quickly and confusedly that a visitor was approaching; and a half-suppressed malediction hovered on the lips of Colville as the portly Mrs. Wodrow was ushered in—ushered in at that moment!
He rose with annoyance, and still retaining Mary's hand in his, said hurriedly, and in a low tone, with a little laugh that was assumed to cover her confusion,
'Promise me that in the matter of leaving Birkwoodbrae you will do no more till I see you again to-morrow.'
'I promise,' replied Mary, trembling very much, and scarcely knowing what she said; and, bowing to Mrs. Wodrow, Colville took his departure, while the pressure of his hand seemed to linger on Mary's heart. 'Who does not know,' says the authoress of 'Nadine,' 'the magnetic thrill—the strange and subduing sense of soul-communion, which sometimes lingers in a hand-clasp;' and with this thrill in her veins Mary addressed herself to the task of talking commonplace to old Mrs. Wodrow.
He had been on the brink of a proposal without doubt, yet none had been made.