'Journeys of a few hundred miles are no longer described in these days of ours,' says Charles Reade; nor those of thousands at the rate we travel, so we have not detailed the journey of Colville.
At last it was ended, and he was with her.
Mary's pulses were leaping with excitement when they met, and she felt herself in his tender and prolonged embrace, though it all seemed a delicious and delirious dream, from which she might waken and again weep for him as dead, or as still expecting him.
It was well-nigh a year since they had parted, a year of many startling events, months since a line had been exchanged between them; and who could blame them if, for a little time, they forgot all the world, and everything else, but each other?
'How strange to think that this is the last walk we shall have together as lovers,' said Mary, in a soft, cooing tone, as they loitered by the Serpentine one evening.
'Yes, when next we promenade thus it will be as sober married folks,' said Colville, with his brightest smile.
'Dear—dear Leslie!'
'Our courtship days have been chequered certainly, but the end is a happy one.'
'Happy we have been from the moment we had perfect faith in each other, with one dreadful interval,' said Mary, with a little sob in her throat, as she thought of the first tidings from Cabul; 'could I but see my pet Ellinor even half so happy!'
'Her days for fullest happiness will come in time—and, dearest Mary, if all these lawyer fellows, Horning and Tailzie, tell me is true, I shall put a coronet on your golden hair, and you shall be my Lady Colville of Ochiltree,' said he, laughingly.