"And what were the wild waves saying?" she asked, smiling honestly and fondly down on his upturned face.
"They seemed to sing to me of love and you, Clara," he answered, in the same joyous manner, and drawing her towards him he kissed her tenderly, passionately, and there was no need for declaring the love that filled his heart and trembled on his lips, and yet he did so in words that filled her heart with mingled joy and fear—joy, for they were such as no young girl could have heard unmoved when addressed to herself—and a great fear, as she thought of her father, and all his words flashed on her memory. She grew pale, and even when Derval's kisses were pressed upon her cheek in that sequestered place, she glanced round her fearfully.
"And you love me in return, Clara, my own Clara?" he murmured, caressing her tenderly after their first incoherences were over.
"Yes, oh yes, Derval, I love you!" she replied.
"It is said to be fortunate for us, that the future is a sealed book," said he, drawing her head and face caressingly into his neck and his breast, "yet I should like to have known that the little girl whose life I saved in Bermuda was to be my wife—my own darling wife—in the years to come!"
His wife!
The sweet assumption made her tears flow fast, and hot and bitter tears they were. The intensity of his love had touched her, and delighted her heart; but these words recalled her father's remarks and injunctions, and even while Derval spoke and she responded, while joining with him in the delirious joy of the present, she had the chilling and terrible fear, that this great love and his suit would prove—all nonsense in the future, and never come to anything!
I was an awful conviction or fear to have at such a moment, and the intensity of her agitation, her sobs and tears, attracted the attention of Derval.
"My own darling," he asked, inquiringly, "why all those tears?"
"My father, Derval,"