'Who can part us but ourselves?' said she with a pretty pout, while her long lashes drooped.
'Dulcie,' said he, after a little pause, 'have you ever had an emotion that comes uncalled for—that which people call a presentiment?'
'Yes; often.'
'Has it ever come true?'
'Sometimes.'
'Well—I have a presentiment this evening which tells me that something is about to happen to me—to us—and very soon too!'
'What can happen to us—we are so happy?' said Dulcie, her blue eyes dilating.
Did the vicinity of Shafto, though unknown to Florian, mysteriously prompt this thought—this boding fear. Shafto heard the words, and a strange smile spread over his face as he shook his clenched hand at the absorbed pair, and stole away from his hiding-place, leaving two foolish hearts full of a foolish dream from which they might be roughly awakened—leaving the happy Florian, with that sweet and winsome Dulcie whom he loved, and with whom he had played even as a child; with whom he had shared many a pot of clotted cream; with whom he had fished for trout in the Erme and Yealm; explored with fearful steps and awe-stricken heart the cavern there, where lie thick the fossil bones of the elephant, hyæna, and wolf; and wandered for hours by the moors, among mossy rocks and mossy trees, and in woody labyrinthine lanes, and many a time and oft by the sea shore, where the cliffs are upheaved and contorted in a manner beyond description, but so loosely bound together that waves rend them asunder, and shape them into forms like ruined castles and stranded ships; till, as years went on, heart had spoken to heart; boy and girl life had been left behind; and that dream-time came in which they seemed to live for years.
No one could accuse Dulcie Carlyon of coquetry, her nature was too truthful and open for that; thus she had never for a moment wavered in her preference between Florian and Shafto, and spent with the former those bright and hopeful hours that seldom come again with the same keen intensity in a lifetime, though often clouded by vague doubts.
As yet they had led a kind of Paul and Virginia life, without very defined ideas of their future; in fact, perhaps scarcely considering what that future might be.