The time for his departure was drawing near now, and thus he was a prey to the most terrible anxiety.
He felt that the relief of words he must have, or his heart would sink. So much had this strong passion become a part of himself, that he felt and thought that he would rather be dead and buried with her, than that she should become the wife of another. And yet such separations come to pass every day, and no one dies of them, so far as the world knows.
He had gathered courage from what he could read in her eyes, more than once, when he had met her and her chaperone, and they had lingered together, talking the merest commonplaces, but with their hearts very full indeed, and Miss Sampler keenly observant of their words and actions. Thus he had resolved that there should be no mistake when the opportunity came, and come it did one day, most unexpectedly, when he met her suddenly, alone too, and then, all the world seemed to stand still!
It was in one of the last places where he would have thought to meet her unattended—at the Nutcracking Rock, an ancient logan-stone, which rests, as it were, upon a keel, so that a push rolls it from side to side, at each vibration being arrested by a stone, against which it knocks. Hence its name, and it stands in a wooded and solitary place, near the shore of the bay, covered with golden moss and surrounded by dwarf oak-trees and hawthorns.
She was seated on a camp-stool, and so intent on her work of sketching it, that he drew near her unperceived, with his heart beating almost painfully, and every fibre tingling with love and joy. His step aroused her, she looked round; a faint exclamation escaped her, and she dropped her pencil.
"Mr. Hampton, you here?"
"Thank heaven that I find you as I do, alone, Clara," said he, picking up the fallen pencil, and kneeling on one knee by her side after he did so. They were eye to eye now, and both were greatly agitated.
"Alone, Clara," said he, taking her unresisting hand, "how are you here alone?"
"Miss Sampler has just left me; did not you meet her?"
"No, I came by the beach."