'Poor man! If the end is so near, surely we can wait, Redmond—nay, of course, we must wait,' she added, coyly and fondly.
'I cannot wait, my love for you will not permit me, yet I am, though well enough off, not so rich that I can afford to lose a great inheritance. Could we—can we—but keep our marriage from his knowledge? But we will talk of all this another time, darling. I am too hasty, too impetuous, with you. People are coming this way. Take my arm; let us go!'
And he led her out into the sunlighted lawn in such a state of bewilderment that but for the chain and locket, of which, to avoid explanations, she divested herself, she would have deemed the whole episode a dream.
So 'the song was sung, the tale was told, and the heart was given away.'
Ellinor, on rejoining her friends, looked about her, and felt somewhat of a relief that she could nowhere see Robert Wodrow, who, as we have said, had abruptly taken his departure, and even amid the splendour of Sir Redmond's proposal—for a splendid one it seemed to poor Ellinor—an emotion of reproach for unloyalty to Robert Wodrow, the first and early lover of her girlish life, rose up in her mind.
While her soul was yet loaded with the memory of that, to her, most naturally great episode in the conservatory, on which all her future life was to turn, we may wonder what she would have thought had she overheard a few bantering words that passed between Sir Redmond Sleath and the Honourable Blanche Galloway as they were looking towards her and evidently talking about her, while Mrs. Wodrow, who was near, strained her ears to listen.
'A wife, you say? No, my dear Miss Galloway; I can't afford such a luxury in these times, and consequently cannot be a marrying man, unless——'
'Unless what?'
'I found one facile enough to have me, and with the necessary amount of acreage, coalpits, money in the Funds, or elsewhere.'
'If so, why are you so attentive in that absurd quarter, where there is no money certainly?' asked the lady, pointing to Ellinor with her fan.